Sergio Ermotti Set to Leave UBS

UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti will leave the bank after retiring from his position later this year. He won’t become the chairman of Switzerland’s largest bank, as some observers had expected.

Instead, Sergio Ermotti on April 17 will stand for election as a non-executive member of the board of Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer.

In 2021, he will be nominated to succeed Walter Kielholz as chairman, according to a statement by Swiss Re on Tuesday.

Kielholz is one of the heavyweights in Swiss finance and has been chairman of Swiss Re since 2009. He was on the board of the reinsurer for more than 20 years. Between 2003 and 2009, Kielholz was chairman of Credit Suisse.

I am honored to be following in the footsteps of Walter Kielholz, who over the past decades immensely furthered the development not only of Swiss Re, but the entire Swiss financial center, said Ermotti, according to the statement.

Today’s announcement put paid to speculation that CEO Ermotti would be replacing Chairman Axel Weber after retiring from his current position at the end of October. When the bank announced Ermotti’s departure at the end of February, it didn’t make a statement about a potential handover of responsibilities at the top of the bank.

At the end of his tenure at UBS, Ermotti will have been CEO of Switzerland’s biggest bank for nine years. Together with Weber, who was elected chairman of the bank in 2012, he has moved UBS away from the classic investment banking model toward a strategy based on wealth management.

More recently, the talk had been about differences of opinion at the top as the board was said to be unhappy how Ermotti had set up his succession plan. UBS has not been able to give the share price a boost, which has never recovered from the financial crisis.

The appointment of Dutch banker Ralph Hamers in February as Ermotti’s successor came as a major surprise. Hamers is known for his digital banking expertise and will need to get UBS ready for the future.