2021 saw the exit of several heavyweights who defined the decade in Swiss banking.
1. Big Banks Without Urs Rohner And Axel Weber
It's never a good sign when major shareholders demand your departure: Urs Rohner (pictured below) left in April amid the cloud of Greensill and Archegos. He had been with Credit Suisse since 2004 and presided it since 2011, in a tenure which can now be viewed as a lost decade in which the Swiss bank shed nearly fourth-fifths of its market capitalization.
(Image: Keystone)
Meanwhile Axel Weber (pictured below) is leaving his imprint on UBS: the former Bundesbanker took over 2012 and together with long-standing COE Sergio Ermotti fashioned the blueprint for a less-capital-absorbing investment bank in favor of wealth management. Weber's successor, Irishman Colm Kelleher, is en route.
(Image: Keystone)
New CEO Ralph Hamers is tackling the technological reform of UBS, including an entrenched hierarchy which has made the wealth manager notoriously difficult to change. France represents the cloud over Weber's tenure, with a recently-upheld criminal conviction likely to outlast his time at UBS.
2. Herbert Scheidt – Lobbyists Unafraid Of Friction
Five years after Herbert Scheidt (pictured below) took over at the Switzerland's biggest banking lobby, Raiffeisen opted out of its membership. The exit had less to do with Scheidt, an eloquent, old-school private banker, than with major differences in strategy between domestic retail- or corporate-focused banks and giants like UBS.
Scheidt, who was at pains to emphasize the international qualities of Swiss banks, found a successor in Marcel Rohner this year. With topics like cybersecurity at the top of the industry's agenda, one of the lobby's chief challenges is uniting a disparate membership behind a common goal.
3. Raiffeisen: C-Suite Churn
There is no such thing as a presidential era, where three chairmen have come and gone in as many years. The latest wasGuy Lachappelle (pictured below), who stepped down amid revelations he had relaxed proprietary information from the Swiss bank he previously ran to a lover.
(Bild: Keystone)
He was replaced by Thomas Mueller, an existing board member who clinched just 76 percent backing from Raiffeisen's delegates.
4. Boris Collardi: Like a Comet
Paradeplatz's collective jaw dropped when the charismatic Nyon native gave up the CEO job at Julius Baer for a partnership at Pictet. It dropped again when the blue-blooded Genevan wealth manager disclosed Boris Collardi's exit three months ago – unconventional at a firm where partners are normally in the job for life.
The 47-year-old was set free of a PDVSA graft probe which gripped Julius Baer for most of the three years following his 2018 exit, but the Pictet fortress proved impenetrable for the star banker, as finews.com reported the high-stakes rupture. His «pull» power remains unbroken: Collardi is likely to pop up somewhere else in Swiss wealth management in a high-profile job.
5. Subtle Facelift For Zurich's Bank
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