Zurich (awp / afp) – The priority of Ralph Hamers, CEO of UBS, has until now been to invest in digital. His counterpart at Credit Suisse had set himself the task of restructuring his bank, to put it back on track.
The two men are now under enormous pressure to conclude before Monday the reluctant takeover of Credit Suisse, the country’s second largest bank, by its great rival UBS and try to appease markets on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Ralph Hamers, the digital man
At the helm of UBS since November 2020, Dutchman Ralph Hamers, 56, is the former boss of ING, where he had built a solid reputation by taking over management when the bank found itself in a difficult situation. to repay the 10 billion euros in public aid granted during the financial crisis.
Under his leadership, ING had finally repaid its loans seven months before the deadline. His mandate within the Dutch group had however been marked by a case of fraudulent use of accounts which had led to the resignation of the financial director.
In 2020, he took over from Sergio Ermotti, now president of the reinsurer Swiss Re, who had spent nine years restoring the image of UBS following its rescue by the State and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in 2008 and a broker’s losses in 2011 that cost the bank $2.3 billion.
Mr. Ermotti had given him the keys to a healthy bank, leaving Ralph Hamers free to launch the shift to digital, one of his great successes at ING.
This banker who willingly appears without a tie and open shirt collar, far from the austere uniform of Zurich bankers, has suffered some setbacks. Last year, UBS had to give up the acquisition of Wealthfront, a Californian platform of automated services in wealth management for which the bank was ready to pay 1.4 billion dollars.
The operation had failed but the priority of Mr. Hamers, at the head of a bank which generated a profit of 7.6 billion dollars in 2022, remained to invest in the digital, and not to buy a bank in difficulties.
Ulrich Körner, the restructuring specialist
Credit Suisse boss Ulrich Körner, 60, was handed the helm in August 2022 following being called in to help in 2021 to turn around asset management following the collapse of British financial firm Greensill in which $10 billion had been committed through four funds.
Described as a “technocrat” in the Swiss press when he was appointed, this discreet banker is known as a restructuring specialist.
Already at UBS, where he worked for 11 years, he had transformed the central functions at headquarters “like a machine”, commented the daily Tages Anzeiger when the Board of Directors of Credit Suisse entrusted him with the difficult task of developing a restructuring plan to turn the bank around.
Doctor in economics, this German-Swiss national has made a back and forth during his career between Credit Suisse and UBS, and therefore knows the two establishments well. In 2007, while working at Credit Suisse, he was one of the executives approached to take over the management. But the position had escaped him, pushing him to leave for UBS.
Returning to Credit Suisse for two years, Mr. Körner unveiled a restructuring plan at the end of October which plans to separate the investment bank to refocus the group on more stable activities such as wealth management with 9,000 job cuts by 2025, i.e. more than 17% of the workforce.
Tuesday, on the eve of the worst session in its history on the stock market, Mr. Körner still called on investors to give him three years, as planned, for this restructuring to bear fruit.
But with an annual loss of 7.3 billion Swiss francs in 2022, and more losses yet to come in 2023, market concern prevailed.
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