Martin Blessing is seeking closer client ties with a new strategy for UBS in Switzerland. There is far more at stake than meets the eye.
The former Commerzbank Chief Executive started as boss of UBS in Switzerland just over one year ago. Installing a German with little knowledge or experience of the Swiss market to run the Zurich-based bank's domestic business raised eyebrows at the time.
The 54-year-old Martin Blessing has already left his mark on UBS. He quietly launched a three-year strategy – Client Experience 2020 – to fully digitize UBS' offering as well as demanding round-the-clock availability for clients to their bankers.
100+ Mln Sfr Strategy
Germany's «Manager Magazin» (in German, behind paywall) reports that Blessing was granted a budget of more than 100 million Swiss francs to launch the strategy – a sum that is not easy to get in these times of negative interest rates and reserved client behavior.
And so Blessing has to deliver. The German banker has until 202o to do so, the magazine reports, claiming that Blessing's desire to make a success of his move from battered Commerzbank to supertanker UBS is palpable.
Ermotti Sub?
Blessing's desire is likely not just diligence but also ambition: CEO Sergio Ermotti, who is 57, reportedly wants to replace his boss, Axel Weber, in 2022 as chairman. Though five years out, this means that succession planning will already be underway at UBS.
Blessing has been an obvious candidate from the beginning – and the only one who has CEO experience. The magazine reports that UBS hired him to enlarge the pool of potential subs for Ermotti – and to prevent a cockfight for the departing Swiss boss Lukas Gaehwiler's job.
Ermotti thinks highly of Blessing, and he was the first to approach the German about a UBS job. The two know each other from Ermotti's time at Unicredit.
Regular Zurich Dweller?
Among the other favorites for Ermotti's job as, as finews.com has previously reported, is 50-year-old private banker Juerg Zeltner and former finance boss Tom Naratil, who has returned to his native U.S. to run the Swiss bank's activities there but remains highly though of in Zurich.
Should both gentlemen leave the succession carousel, Blessing would be equipped to step up. And, as «Manager Magazin» slyly notes, the German banker who commutes to Frankfurt, where his wife runs J.P. Morgan's investment bank in German-speaking Europe, could turn his rental agreement on Zurich's affluent hillside into a more permanent arrangement.
