2023-06-16 13:24:19
Sergio Ermotti, the boss of UBS, will have the heavy task of leading the integration of Credit Suisse, another major project for this banker with an extraordinary career who had already transformed the country’s leading bank.
Known for his elegance, this Swiss banker, 63, was called back to the helm in early April following the takeover of Credit Suisse. For the board of directors of UBS, he is “the best pilot” to carry out a very complex task.
For UBS board, Ermotti is “the best driver” to carry out a very complex task
The Swiss press had underlined his excellent knowledge of UBS but also of the workings of political power, two valuable assets. The merger of the two banks causes many fears in the Alpine country following a rescue with the help of the State.
The next few months promise to be “bumpy”, as waves of tough decisions are still to come, especially in terms of employment, he warned on Friday.
Mr. Ermotti is today a key figure in the Swiss financial centre. Nicknamed the George Clooney of Paradeplatz, the banking district in Zurich, he had already led UBS from 2011 to 2020.
He then took over control of a bank shaken by the 2008 financial crisis, which itself had to call on the state for help, then by the losses of a rogue trader who had swallowed up $ 2.3 billion. in risky transactions.
At the time totally unknown in Switzerland, the man who had until then made his career between London, New York and Milan had launched a major transformation of UBS. He had refocused on wealth management and pruned investment banking.
This successful restructuring had enabled him to forge a solid reputation, opening the doors to the reinsurer Swiss Re, of which he had been entrusted with the presidency in 2021.
But the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS changed the game. To avoid its bankruptcy, UBS agreed on March 19 to buy it back for the modest sum of 3 billion Swiss francs (an equivalent sum in euros) under pressure from the Swiss authorities.
Recalled to the controls two and a half weeks later, Mr. Ermotti said he took over the management of UBS “out of a sense of duty”.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung then hailed the return of this banker considered one of the “most talented of his generation”. During a conference organized last week in partnership with this Zurich daily, Mr. Ermotti was asked if he saw himself rather as a kind of Superman, a cleaning man responsible for restoring order or the coach of a new team.
To which this AC Milan fan replied that he preferred the latter option. The objective is above all to bring out “something good from a situation which is not ideal”, he said.
As a child, he dreamed of a career in football. At 15, he had left school, not to put on crampons, but to enter as an apprentice at the Cornèr bank in Lugano, his hometown, near the border with Italy.
From then on, he had a meteoric career. After a stint at Citigroup, he rose through the ranks of the American bank Merrill Lynch between 1987 and 2004, completing his training throughout his career with a management program at the British University of Oxford.
In 2005, he joined the Italian bank UniCredit for five years, where he headed the markets and investment banking division, before being entrusted with the management of UBS in 2011.
“Used to play firefighters”, the man is “made for the takeover of Credit Suisse”, estimated La Tribune de Genève. He will have the heavy task of merging two banks already considered too big to fail even before their merger.
In the press release formalizing the union of the two banks, Mr. Ermotti said he wanted to create a bank of which “customers, employees, investors and Switzerland can be proud”.
The integration will be “without compromise”, however, underlined the management of UBS, which is proud of the “conservative” risk culture that Mr. Ermotti had re-instilled in UBS.
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