Sergio Ermotti

Overview

Sergio Ermotti
Born	(1960-05-11) 11 May 1960 Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland
Citizenship	Swiss
Education	Swiss federal banking diploma; Advanced Management Program, University of Oxford
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Occupation(s)	Banker, business executive
Employer	UBS Group AG
Known for	Leading post-crisis restructuring of UBS and overseeing the acquisition and integration of Credit Suisse
Title	Group Chief Executive Officer
Term	2011–2020; 2023–present
Predecessor	Oswald Grübel; Ralph Hamers
Board member of	Swiss Re (former chairman); Ermenegildo Zegna Group; Innosuisse; Institute of International Finance; London Stock Exchange Group (former director)
Spouse	Tina Ermotti
Children	2

🏦 Sergio Ermotti (born 11 May 1960) is a Swiss banker who has served as group chief executive officer (CEO) of UBS Group AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, in two separate periods, from 2011 to 2020 and again from April 2023, and is widely associated with reshaping UBS into a global wealth-management-focused institution after the global financial crisis.

📊 Reputation and role. Having started his career as an apprentice in a regional bank and later rising through senior positions at Merrill Lynch and Italy’s UniCredit, Ermotti is regarded in financial commentary as a crisis manager whose tenure at UBS has combined large-scale balance-sheet repair with an emphasis on capital strength, wealth management and reputational rebuilding following a series of scandals and legacy litigation.

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Early life and education

🏠 Family background. Sergio Pietro Ermotti was born on 11 May 1960 in Lugano, an Italian-speaking city in the Swiss canton of Ticino, into what he has described as a modest family; his father worked in the mailroom of a local bank, and the experience of watching that diligence shaped the younger Ermotti’s view that one should “give 100%… till the last minute”.

⚽ Football ambitions. As a teenager, Ermotti initially pursued a dream of becoming a professional footballer, leaving school at 15 and playing in local leagues before concluding that he was unlikely to reach the top level, at which point he briefly considered becoming a sports teacher instead. In order to gain practical skills, he undertook a three-year apprenticeship at Cornèr Bank in Lugano, where his father was employed, working in the securities department and discovering what he later called “the magic of this business, its global nature”, leading him by the age of 16 to decide he wanted to be a trader.

🎓 Banking education. Rather than follow a traditional university route, Ermotti completed a Swiss federal banking diploma and later attended the Advanced Management Program at the University of Oxford, a non-degree executive course that broadened his management perspective while reinforcing the strongly practical orientation of his training in finance. He has frequently presented this unconventional educational path as evidence that the Swiss apprenticeship system can provide an alternative route to senior corporate careers.

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Career

Early banking career

💼 Cornèr Bank and Merrill Lynch. After his apprenticeship, Ermotti began his professional career in trading at Cornèr Bank before moving in 1985 to Citibank in Zurich as a trader of equity-linked products, and then, in 1987, joining Merrill Lynch’s Zurich office, where he would spend the next sixteen years. At Merrill Lynch he rose rapidly through the equities division, becoming a managing director in 1993, leading European equity derivatives in London and later heading global derivatives trading in New York, before being appointed co-head of Global Equity Markets and a member of the firm’s executive management committee.

🌍 Move to UniCredit. In 2005, after nearly two decades in Anglo-American investment banking, Ermotti joined UniCredit in Milan as head of markets and investment banking, arriving soon after UniCredit’s acquisition of German bank HVB and playing a key role in integrating and expanding the group’s capital markets activities. Within two years he was promoted to deputy CEO with responsibility for corporate and investment banking as well as private banking, effectively serving as a principal lieutenant to CEO Alessandro Profumo until Profumo’s resignation in 2010, when a subsequent management reshuffle passed over Ermotti for the top job and prompted his own departure from the group.

📞 Recruitment by UBS. On the day his exit from UniCredit was announced, Ermotti received a call from Oswald Grübel, then CEO of UBS, who invited him to return to Switzerland to help stabilize the bank after its post-crisis troubles, an offer he later described as a “chance to go home” and restore pride in a flagship Swiss institution. He joined UBS in April 2011 as chairman and CEO for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and became a member of the group executive board in Zurich.

UBS chief executive (2011–2020)

🚨 Appointment amid trading scandal. Only months after arriving at UBS, Ermotti was drawn into crisis management when, in September 2011, the bank disclosed a US$2.3 billion loss linked to unauthorized trading at its investment bank, which led to the resignation of CEO Oswald Grübel and intense scrutiny from regulators and investors. The UBS board named Ermotti interim group CEO in the immediate aftermath and, following several weeks in which he focused on stabilizing staff morale and client relationships, confirmed him as permanent group CEO in November 2011.

🧭 Strategic refocus on wealth management. Early in his tenure, Ermotti circulated an internal memorandum stating that “no one’s personal interest nor any amount of revenue is worth more than the bank’s reputation”, signalling a cultural reset after years of aggressive risk-taking in investment banking. In 2012 he unveiled a strategic overhaul that sharply reduced UBS’s fixed-income trading activities, reoriented the investment bank toward capital-light advisory and equities businesses, and placed global wealth management, the Swiss domestic bank and asset management at the centre of the group’s business model, a pivot analysts viewed as a decisive move “back to its roots”.

📈 Performance and market position. Under Ermotti’s leadership between 2011 and 2020, UBS generated around US$37 billion in pre-tax profit and returned approximately US$20 billion to shareholders, even while absorbing roughly US$15 billion in litigation and regulatory costs related largely to pre-crisis misconduct, strengthening its capital position and dividend profile in the process. Over the same period, assets under management in wealth management rose by more than US$1 trillion to about US$2.6 trillion, reinforcing UBS’s position as the world’s largest wealth manager and contributing to a valuation premium in which the bank’s shares at times traded at around 1.6 times tangible book value compared with about 1.3 times for the European sector average.

🕰 Departure and first handover. In February 2020, after nearly nine years as CEO and as the longest-serving chief executive in UBS’s modern history, Ermotti announced that he would step down, timing his departure for later that year and eventually handing over to former ING chief Ralph Hamers in November 2020, by which time he had also overseen the group’s initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than retire from corporate life, he moved into non-executive roles, most prominently becoming chairman of Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance companies, in 2021, where he drew on his experience in risk management and long-term capital allocation.

Swiss Re and other mandates

🏛 Board roles and chairmanships. Alongside his chairmanship of Swiss Re between 2021 and 2023, Ermotti has served on various boards, including as lead independent director of Italian luxury fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna, as a member of the board of the Institute of International Finance and of the Swiss innovation agency Innosuisse, and previously as a director of London Stock Exchange Group and of a regional Swiss airline, Darwin Airline. These roles extended his network beyond banking into capital markets infrastructure, fashion and public-sector innovation, while maintaining a core focus on global finance and risk governance.

Return to UBS and Credit Suisse integration

🧩 Second tenure as UBS CEO. In March 2023, following the rapid loss of confidence in Credit Suisse, the Swiss authorities brokered a rescue in which UBS agreed to acquire its rival, creating by far the largest bank in the country; shortly thereafter, UBS’s board replaced Ralph Hamers with Ermotti as group CEO, effective 5 April 2023, citing his prior turnaround experience and deep familiarity with the organisation. Commentators described the task of integrating Credit Suisse and managing the enlarged balance sheet as “the hardest job in Switzerland”, placing Ermotti once again at the centre of both domestic and European banking policy debates.

🧮 Integration strategy and early results. In his second tenure, Ermotti has emphasised risk control, cultural integration and client retention, stating that he did not intend to “brutally downsize” the combined bank but would instead pursue a measured consolidation to avoid destabilising key franchises, while setting multi-year targets for cost savings and returns on equity. Early financial results following the acquisition were supported by one-off accounting gains and client inflows, and by 2025 analysts noted that UBS was running ahead of previously communicated profitability expectations, although Ermotti cautioned that full integration of Credit Suisse would take years and remain under close regulatory and political scrutiny.

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Compensation and wealth

💷 Executive remuneration. During his first spell as UBS CEO, Ermotti’s total compensation averaged roughly CHF 11–12 million per year, placing him among the highest-paid bank executives in Europe, a level that reflected both the scale of the institution and the turnaround challenges it faced. On returning to the role in 2023, he was awarded CHF 14.4 million for nine months of work that year—making him, on an annualised basis, Europe’s best-compensated bank chief executive—and CHF 14.9 million in 2024, including a CHF 2.8 million base salary and CHF 12.1 million in variable incentives.

⚖ Shareholder and political reactions. These pay levels became a focal point in Swiss debates over executive remuneration following the Credit Suisse rescue, with some parliamentarians calling for stricter caps on senior banking pay while the UBS board argued that the packages reflected the “exceptional” responsibilities attached to integrating a former competitor of comparable size. At the 2025 annual general meeting, approximately 86 percent of UBS shareholders approved the 2024 remuneration report, signalling broad but not unanimous support for the board’s judgment against a backdrop of heightened political scrutiny.

💰 Personal fortune and investments. Decades in senior roles at Merrill Lynch, UniCredit, UBS and Swiss Re have enabled Ermotti to accumulate substantial personal wealth; market disclosures estimate his net worth in the mid eight-figure US-dollar range and indicate that he holds a meaningful stake in UBS shares—on the order of a few tenths of a percent—aligning his financial interests with those of the bank’s shareholders. Beyond UBS, he has invested in other ventures, including a stake in Tessal, a leisure company involved in renovating luxury hotels in Lugano, and he has maintained a portfolio of board positions in both corporate and philanthropic organisations.

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Personal life and views

🏡 Family and roots. Ermotti is married to his wife, Tina, and the couple have two children; despite his international career, they have retained close ties to Ticino, maintaining a home in Lugano, where he also supports local cultural and charitable initiatives. A lifelong football enthusiast, he is a supporter of FC Lugano and Italian club AC Milan, and he has described the atmosphere of the stadium and team dressing room as formative for his later management style.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Leadership philosophy. Drawing explicitly on his experience as a youth football captain, Ermotti has argued that effective leadership means building teamwork while recognising that “it’s not possible to be friends all the time”, provided that everyone is moving in the same direction, and he has stated that he does not seek “blind loyalty” but expects honesty and alignment with the firm’s interests. Colleagues and profile writers have portrayed his approach as one in which he delegates day-to-day operational decisions, intervenes only when necessary, and reacts decisively if he feels that an executive’s ego or personal agenda has started to outweigh the organisation’s needs.

🎭 Personality and interests. Public accounts describe Ermotti as cosmopolitan yet grounded, fluent in Italian, German, French and English and equally at ease in Zurich, London or New York, while still speaking with a distinct Ticinese accent and referring to himself as “a simple Tessin boy” at heart. He enjoys skiing in the Swiss Alps and jogging to keep fit—albeit, he has joked, without particular enthusiasm—and has cited classic films such as The Sting and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest among his favourites, reflecting a taste for stories of risk, deception and moral ambiguity that some commentators see as resonant with his professional milieu.

📣 Public statements and social media. Unlike many senior Swiss bankers, Ermotti has occasionally adopted an outspoken public tone: in 2017 he criticised officials who attacked banking bonus culture as being motivated partly by “envy” because they did not earn comparable sums, a remark that sparked debate about the social standing of finance in Switzerland. During periods of negative press coverage, particularly when UBS earnings softened or controversies were prominent, he has used a personal Twitter account as UBS CEO to rebut what he viewed as superficial or inaccurate commentary, sometimes addressing journalists directly, while simultaneously rejecting suggestions that he might enter formal politics and insisting that he preferred to remain in business rather than seek office on the Swiss Federal Council.

🎗 Philanthropy and cultural engagement. In addition to his corporate responsibilities, Ermotti is involved in philanthropic work, notably through the Fondazione Ermotti, a family foundation in Lugano, and through service on the board of a local cultural foundation, where he has supported art and education projects in his home region. These activities, together with his occasional essays on economic issues and his support for innovation and entrepreneurship through institutions such as Innosuisse, have contributed to a public image that combines business leadership with a concern for longer-term social and cultural development.

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Controversies

⚖ Legacy litigation and LIBOR. A significant part of Ermotti’s first tenure at UBS was devoted to handling legacy litigation stemming from pre-crisis misconduct, including the bank’s involvement in the global LIBOR interest-rate-rigging scandal, for which UBS paid around US$1.5 billion in fines to regulators in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland. While the underlying behaviour largely pre-dated his arrival as CEO, the financial and reputational consequences shaped his strategic focus on strengthening capital, tightening controls and re-emphasising the bank’s wealth-management franchise.

🇫🇷 French tax-evasion case. The most damaging individual legal case on Ermotti’s watch concerned allegations that UBS helped wealthy French clients evade taxes; in 2019 a French court convicted the bank and imposed penalties totalling about €4.5 billion in fines and damages, one of the largest such judgments against a European bank. UBS appealed the ruling and later secured a reduction in the penalties, but the case led to an unusual rebuke at the 2019 annual general meeting, where shareholders refused to grant formal discharge to the board and executive management for that year, reflecting anger over the scale of the sanctions even though more than four-fifths of investors still approved the executive compensation proposals.

👩‍🍼 Corporate-culture debates. During the late 2010s, UBS also faced criticism over elements of its human-resources policies, including a practice that reduced bonuses for women returning from maternity leave, which critics saw as tone-deaf and inconsistent with diversity goals; the bank quickly abandoned the policy after public outcry. Combined with a temporarydip in earnings, such controversies fuelled speculation at times about whether Ermotti’s first tenure might be drawing to a close, prompting him to respond vigorously in media interviews and on social media while arguing that the bank was addressing shortcomings and learning from these episodes.

📌 Size, risk and remuneration debates. Following the acquisition of Credit Suisse and his re-appointment as CEO, Ermotti became a focal point in a broader Swiss and European discussion about banks deemed “too big to fail”, with critics questioning whether the enlarged UBS posed systemic risks and whether its leadership should face stricter constraints on pay. He has responded that competitive compensation is necessary to attract and retain executives willing to shoulder such responsibilities, warning that if society “vilifies” bankers excessively, talented leaders may choose other careers, a stance that continues to be debated in Swiss politics and the media.

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