Switzerland knew two major bank bosses with a strong affinity to motor racing: Eduardo Eddie Lehmann, CEO of Falcon Private Bank until 2016. His bank used to back the Toro Rosso team for a couple of years. The other famous banker was Oswald Gruebel. One of his employers, Credit Suisse, was the main sponsor of the Hinwil-based Sauber F1 team, and his other bank, UBS, took over as a major sponsor of the whole racing series.
The sport remains banned in Switzerland due the risks that are associated with it, but still attracts billions of viewers across the globe. Lehmann was very frank in his assessment of the rationale behind his investment in F1: the rich love what they can’t get, and the F1 series isn’t easily bought, he used to say.
Both Lehmann and Gruebel are out of their jobs – while UBS remains a sponsor of F1, a deal that is in its ninth year. The Swiss are the last among the major global banks to be sponsors of the biggest motor-racing series, French newspaper Les Echos noted recently.
The financial crisis put paid to many great sponsorship deals and ING was quick to pull the plug on its support of F1. Both ABN Amro and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) followed suit. In 2017, Spain’s Santander exited the business of motor racing by quitting as sponsors of Ferrari.
Les Echos suggested that F1 represented pretty much everything that banks wanted to leave behind them after the financial crisis – egotism, a focus on risk and speed, the destruction of the environment and noise pollution.
UBS begged to differ. The bank said it was extremely proud about the cooperation with its partners in Formula 1 in a response to an inquiry from Les Echos. UBS also said that the sponsoring deal allowed it to conduct its business and build relationships with clients, when asked about the impact on its reputation as a sustainable bank. It was to remain a F1 sponsor as long as it made sense for its brand.