Another “end-of-an-era” move as UBS confirmed Tuesday that its chairman Marcel Ospel will step down after reporting an additional $19bn of writedowns and a first quarter loss.
UBS confirmed Ospel’s departure in a statement on its website, including detail a fresh capital increase of SFr15bn ($15.1bn) in fresh funds from shareholders in a rights issue. The news comes ahead of UBS’s annual meeting on April 23.
The latest writedowns and capital raising – just weeks after shareholders approved a similar-sized injection from outside investors – had raised already strong pressure on Ospel to step down, although there was no suggestion on Monday the decision had been taken.
Ospel, who led the creation of UBS in a merger a decade ago, will be succeeded by general counsel Peter Kurer.
For a quick glance at Ospel’s long – many say too long – and resilient career, read the FT’s recent profile, in which FT correspondent Haig Simonion notes that interviewing Ospel, “Switzerland’s best-known and, until recently, most handsomely paid banker”, is like “climbing a wall of polished marble”.
Inscrutability is the watchword of the 58-year-old chairman of UBS for the past seven years, says Simonian. He is regularly depicted as an ice-cold power broker with an instinctive sense of personal advantage, but ego or guile never mar his public persona. “He’s not in any sense the classical banker. That makes him hard to call, which has often worked to his advantage,” says Dirk Schütz, editor of the Swiss business magazine Bilanz, who wrote a biography of Ospel last year.
This time, however, that inscrutability did not save him.
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Ospel to leave after fresh $19bn writedown – FT