The American banker stepped down as chief executive of asset manager GAM three years ago. Now, the former UBS banker is resurfacing – at another Swiss bank.
David Solo ran the Swiss asset manager for ten years before stepping down in 2014. The U.S. banker with a Swiss passport disappeared from the finance stage, but quietly devoted his time to DCI, a San Francisco-based quantitative asset manager he co-founded in 2004.
Three years later, the 53-year-old publicity-shy banker has resurfaced as chairman of Systematic Investment Management – or Simag – according to a press release. The unit is a joint venture between Credit Suisse's asset management arm and a spin-off of Zurich's ETH technical university.
Simag offers institutional investors quantitative solutions based on physics, deep learning, and behavioral finance. Renowned French physicistDidier Sornette (pictured below) is also advising Simag, which is being led by Credit Suisse banker Pascal Schneider.
Marcel Ospel Ties
Sornette and Solo know each other from academic circles: «I worked closely with Professor Sornette on the practical implementation of his leading research,» Solo, who studied electrical engineering at the U.S.' prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, said in the statement.
Solo is a close former associate of Marcel Ospel, the former chairman of UBS who is still reviled in Switzerland for what is perceived to be his role in the Swiss bank's near-death in 2008. Solo, who began his career at O'Connor, a Chicago derivatives firm bought by UBS in 1992, was instrumental in hammering out UBS' investment banking strategy before the crisis.
He left the bank in 2005 as part of the sale of GAM and three private banks to Julius Baer. Three years later, the bank spun off GAM to shareholders.
