ZURICH, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Private bank Julius Baer is considering whether to bid for Barclays' Asianprivate wealth business as part of the Swiss group's acquisitioncampaign, Chief Executive Boris Collardi told Reuters on Monday.
Barclays has picked Lazard to help advise on thedeal amid efforts to scale back in Asia, three sources withknowledge of the matter said last month.
"We haven't decided yet whether this (business) is somethinginteresting for us or not, but I think we're going to see moreof that happening," Collardi said in a telephone interview,elaborating on earlier comments about potential takeovers.
"We normally look at everything in order for us to come to aconclusion whether it is interesting or not. That's how we canbe expressing ourselves so clearly about a number of othertargets," he added.
Baer, with 300 billion Swiss francs ($295 billion) of assetsunder management, is looking for private banking assets thateither stand alone or are part of a larger bank.
"It needs a certain size, so anything I would say up from 30billion onwards, 50 billion, 70 billion," he said, addingpotential targets had to have shed undeclared wealth and offersynergies once put on Baer's platform.
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.
($1 = 1.0163 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Michael Shields and Angelika Gruber; editing byAdrian Croft)