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Swiss banker Juerg Zeltner was ousted as head of UBS' private bank last week. finews.asia looks at the myriad reasons and months of planning leading up to the move.

Full disclosure: Juerg Zeltner's exit as head of UBS' private bank isn't truly a surprise. finews.asia learned roughly six months ago of a plan to replace him and shuffle top executives, but couldn't substantiate the reporting. Since then, the Swiss bank's board led by Axel Weber has meticulously rolled out the succession plan – due in part to unsatisfactory results from the private banker. 

In short, Zeltner was not going to hit his own profit targets set up three years ago, and began resorting to cost cuts in order to prop up profits. Against this backdrop, the 30-year-veteran raised eyebrows last year by saying UBS wasn't hunting for net new money unless profits followed – a surprising admission of defeat from the world's largest wealth manager by assets.

Myriad Exit Reasons

The reasons for Zeltner's unceremonious exit are myriad. In particular, he was the last representative of Swiss Bank Corporation, or SBC, one of the banks to join in 1998's mega-merger to form today's UBS. Zeltner was a SBC veteran, beginning an apprenticeship at the Basel-based based in 1984.

As finews.asia chronicled last week, the fault lines of SBC's merger with Union Bank of Switzerland still run surprisingly deep 20 years on. Zeltner was part of the entourage of Marcel Ospel, the influential ex-UBS chairman and the bank's crisis-era villain.

Until today, the sense prevails among long-time UBS employees that SBC bankers dragged the bank into the financial crisis of 2008/09. They include Ospel acolytes such as Peter Wuffli, Marcel Rohner, Raoul Weil – and Juerg Zeltner.

Unlike the other bankers, who left UBS either voluntarily or were forced out in the intervening years, Zeltner, the penultimate power broker. When current CEO Sergio Ermotti took the top job in 2011, Zeltner – who had opposed Ermotti and vied for the job himself – nevertheless thrived.