Team Moves
The Most Valuable, and Most Difficult, Mandates in Private Banking
A team transition is not simply several individual placements happening at once. It is a single, complex mandate — evaluating combined book portability, team cohesion, and the operational mechanics of multiple senior bankers moving to a new platform together, often across booking centres. Few search firms have genuine depth in structuring these moves. It is one of Ateca’s core areas of expertise.
What Makes a Team Move Different
Combined, not individual, evaluation. A team’s value is not the sum of its members’ individual books. We assess portability, client overlap, and revenue concentration across the team as a single unit.
Cohesion and complementary coverage. The strongest team moves bring complementary market coverage and clear internal roles — a lead banker with senior standing, supported by relationship managers with their own portable books and distinct market strength.
Cross-border complexity. Many of the strongest team opportunities we manage involve assets booked across multiple centres — Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong — requiring careful coordination with a receiving institution’s booking and compliance requirements.
Absolute discretion at scale. A multi-person move carries proportionally greater confidentiality risk than an individual placement. We manage every team mandate with the same discretion we apply to our most senior individual searches, magnified across every member of the team.
For Banks
Team hires offer institutions a rare opportunity: an established, cohesive book of business, with proven internal working relationships, transitioning as a single unit. We structure the evaluation, presentation, and negotiation of team moves to give our banking partners complete visibility into combined AUM, portability, revenue generation, and team dynamics before a single conversation begins with your leadership.
For Bankers Considering a Team Move
If you are considering a move together with colleagues, we manage these conversations with particular care — understanding not only individual motivations but the shared commercial case for a team transition, and presenting that case to the right institution with the context it deserves.