On Friday, Julius Baer's group forwarded that it is set to mull over acquisitions in Switzerland and abroad. The announcement comes as the group aspires to achieve new targets for its private banking and asset management arms.

Having Europe as its key strategic market for private banking, Julius Baer made it clear that it wants "to further build Asia as its second home market". Baer confirmed to have examined, over the weekend, the private banking assets Dutch bank ING Group NV is putting up for sale.

The group seems to be ready for finalizing a deal. Thursday, sources specified that though Baer had moved out of the race to buy ING's Asian private banking business, it could still snap up Swiss assets. Annualized net new money growth of 4 to 6 percent through 2012, is apparently the end target of Baer, which had overall net new money of
4 billion Swiss francs ($3.90 billion) in the first half of 2009.