Eight months after leaving the banking industry, former Credit Suisse and Julius Baer banker Barend Fruithof is celebrating a finance comeback of sorts.
«As they say, never say never,» Barend Fruithof said in March when finews.com asked him whether he could envision returning to finance. The banker had just taken the top job at ASH Group, a maker of special-purpose vehicles which is majority-owned by Swiss industrialist and right-wing politician Peter Spuhler.
Less than one year later, Fruithof is back in finance: the 50-year Swiss banker with Dutch roots is joining the board of Zugerberg Finanz, according to a newsletter from the firm.
The ex-Julius Baer Swiss head gave up all his finance-related jobs when he took the CEO role at ASH, which stands for Aebi Schmidt Holding, including heading the Employers Association of Banks in Switzerland. The only mandate he kept from his previous life was with deposit guarantor Esisuisse.
Blunt-Talking Banker
A big name in Swiss banking, Fruithof's 20-year career began at Zuercher Kantonalbank and Viseca Card Services, which is now Aduno Group. He joined cooperative lender Raiffeisen and later Credit Suisse, where he ran the Zurich-based bank's business with Swiss corporates from 2008. Seven years later, he moved to private bank Julius Baer, where he fell victim to a reorganization by Chief Executive Boris Collardi several months later.
Fruithof excelled as a versatile executive with few airs and graces, but with clearly delineated and communicated goals for his teams. This bluntness was not universally welcomed at Julius Baer, a bank with a powerful faction of private bankers.
Trained as an agriculturist, Fruithof joins the board of one of Switzerland's asset managers which are growing. Zugerberg's managed assets stood at 1.8 billion Swiss francs last year, 600 million from advising institutional clients. Led by Timo Dainese, the firm employs 27 people.
