Former UBS Boss to Head Banker Lobby

The weighty trade group is tapping Marcel Rohner, who ran UBS during the financial crisis, as its next chairman.

Marcel Rohner will succeed long-standing Swiss Bankers Association Chairman Herbert Scheidt, effective mid-September, the Basel-based lobby said in a statement on Tuesday. The 57-year-old Rohner has sat on the SBA’s board for the past three years.

He is better known as the man thrust into the CEO job at UBS 16 months before the Swiss wealth manager was forced to take a government bailout in October of 2008. After stepping down four months later, he has taken jobs including deputy chair of Geneva’s Union Bancaire Privée and overseer at property firm Warteck Invest and in firms controlled by Swiss investors Daniel Aegerter.

Rohner will lead a lobby where interests are drifting apart. Cooperative Raiffeisen left six months ago, disillusioned over the influence of weightier actors like UBS and Credit Suisse at the traditionally conservative and influential business association.

I am familiar with the highs and lows of the banking business and with large, medium-sized and small institutions, Rohner said in a statement by the SBA. The most important lesson I have learned is that for the banks, shared interests are the norm and diverging interests the exception.