China’s Geely has sold its majority stake in Denmark’s €1.6bn Saxo Bank to Swiss private bank J Safra Sarasin, ending an eight-year joint venture that bet on Chinese capital markets opening up to the west. 

The 180-year-old J Safra Sarasin, based in Basel and part of a $25bn global empire built by the late Lebanese-Brazilian patriarch Joseph Safra, has acquired Geely’s 49.9 per cent stake in Saxo Bank and Finland’s Mandatum’s 19.8 per cent, in a deal worth about €1.1bn. 

J Safra Sarasin and Saxo Bank, known for its trading platforms that allow customers to deal in everything from currencies and commodities to equities and derivatives, will still operate as standalone entities but the deal will allow both to “diversify” into different businesses and geographies, executives said. J Safra Sarasin, for example, will integrate Saxo Bank’s technology.