2024-09-29 12:00:55
This is how the UBS president justifies Ermotti’s million-dollar salary
Colm Kelleher talks about the predictability of CS’s demise, the high wages in the industry and why he believes UBS has enough capital.
UBS President Colm Kelleher at a media conference on the new UBS (March 29, 2023).
Photo: Michael Buholzer (Keystone)
A year and a half ago, a catastrophe for the Swiss business location was averted: UBS took over the ailing Credit Suisse and became a major bank. UBS President Colm Kelleher now commented in an interview with “Sonntagsblick” among other things, about the downfall of CS and the high wages. In addition, UBS is an opportunity and not a threat for Switzerland.
This is what Kelleher says about the CS demise and its omens
Finma has written letters to the CS board of directors, said the UBS board chairman. It is “unbelievable” that the CS received these letters and did “nothing or too little.” “The best regulators in the world start much earlier, long before rules are broken,” said Kelleher.
For him, it had been “obvious” since 2015 that Credit Suisse would no longer be able to survive as an independent company. Kelleher says: “From October 2022, in my view, their future only consisted of an emergency rescue. So I don’t understand why they waited eight years when the warning signs were there from 2015. But to be clear: It was primarily the responsibility of the board of directors and the management of CS to radically turn things around.”
When he came to UBS in 2022, the first thing he did was put together a working group to be prepared for the CS case. An uncontrolled downfall of CS would also have cost UBS a lot of money, said Kelleher.
This is what Kelleher says about the accusation that UBS needs more equity
Switzerland has one of the strictest regimes in the world when it comes to capital regulations, and this is likely to be further tightened. The Increase in capital requirements make no sense. “This is nothing more than a tranquilizer for the people.”
UBS is not a threat to Switzerland. If UBS goes into a tailspin, which he considers very unlikely, there is a plan to get the bank back on track. It can guarantee that “we have the capital and liquidity to survive such accidents without burdening taxpayers,” said the VRP.
He went on to say that leaving Switzerland was out of the question, even though UBS is a global bank. The heart of UBS is its Swissness.
This is how Kelleher justifies the high wages
The UBS president defended the “perhaps unfairly” high wages in banking. “If you don’t pay, you don’t get the people you need,” he said. There is a need for specialists who understand banking.
Sergio Ermotti didn’t have to become UBS boss, he said. He had a good job as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Swiss Re and now he works around the clock, seven days a week. Looking back, however, he underestimated what reaction the UBS boss’s remuneration would trigger. In absolute terms, he understands the criticism. “Relatively speaking, we only paid Sergio Ermotti 10 percent more than his predecessor, even though he took on a much more difficult task,” said the UBS president.
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