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By Saeed Azhar and Pamela Barbaglia
SINGAPORE/LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Barclays ispressing ahead with the sale of its Asian private wealthbusiness and has picked Lazard to help advise on thedeal amid efforts to scale back its Asian operations, threesources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.
Credit Suisse is among a handful of banks whichhave expressed an interest in making a bid, the sources said,adding talks were at an early stage.
If successful, the deal would help the Swiss bank win marketshare in a highly-competitive wealth management market in Asia,led by global players such as UBS and Citigroup.
Credit Suisse is evaluating the synergies it could extractfrom Barclays' portfolio of high net-worth individuals in Asia,one of the sources said, cautioning a deal was not certain.
Barclays, Lazard and Credit Suisse declined to comment.
Reuters reported on Dec. 18 that DBS Group Holdings and Julius Baer were likely to enter therace for the unit which could be valued at about $600 million.
Barclays is looking to sell its Asian private wealth unit aspart of new Chief Executive Jes Staley's strategy of cuttingcosts and selling off non-core assets.
The British bank recently worked with Lazard to sell itsItalian bank branches to CheBanca!, the retail arm of Mediobanca.
Barclays managed $36 billion in private banking assets inAsia as of 2014, according to a survey by industry publicationPrivate Banker International, ranking it 14th in Asia.
UBS and Citigroup were the top private banks in Asia, thesurvey said, followed by Credit Suisse which has made Asia itspriority region for business growth, echoing moves by UBS.
ASIAN PUSH
Credit Suisse's new chief Tidjane Thiam, who spearheadedstrong growth in Asia in his previous job at insurer Prudential,said in October he wanted to more than double income from Asiato 2.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.1 billion) by 2018.
The Swiss bank, world No.4 in private banking, is keen toexpand among the growing ranks of Asia's billionaires to offsetits sliding investment banking business in Europe.
UBS launched its push into wealth management in Asia in 2011and managed about $272 billion in 2014, almost double CreditSuisse's Asia-Pacific wealth business.
Asia excluding Japan is forecast to double its netmillionaire wealth to $17.7 trillion by 2018, according toMcKinsey.
The region has seen a spate of deals in private bankingsince the financial crisis, notably in 2009 when ING offloadedits Asian private bank to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp for $1.5billion.
($1 = 1.0148 Swiss francs) (Additional reporting by Joshua Franklin in Zurich; Editing byRachel Armstrong and Mark Potter)
