Mouhammed Choukeir

Spear’s Review

In 2025, Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) acquired SG Kleinwort Hambros to create one of the largest family-owned pure-play private banks in the UK. SG Kleinwort Hambros has a history of such mergers; It was created in 2016 when French banking giant Société Générale acquired Kleinwort Benson and merged it with its subsidiary SG Hambros, which it had already acquired in 1998.

CIO Mouhammed Choukeir was appointed as its third CEO in two years, at the start of the pandemic in 2020. ‘My first day as CEO was from behind a screen,’ he jokes with Spear’s.

Choukeir’s premiership has been focused on projecting the bank’s image as one with deep European history (UBP is one of the largest private banks in Switzerland, Hambros financed Scandinavian businesses, while Kleinwort Benson, a bank with German origins, financed the Spanish government over several decades), ‘with a modern, entrepreneurial mindset’. 

In a conversation prior to the 2025 merger, Choukeir emphasised the bank’s focus on helping its clients ‘build sustainable legacies for generations to come’.