Konrad Hummler is advising a fund with roots in collapsed Wegelin & Cie, finews.com has learned. What is behind the fallen Swiss banker's return to finance, including a high-profile role at a Swiss private bank?
He doesn't have far to walk for his new job advising 1741 Group: Konrad Hummler's office on St. Gallen's prestigious Museumstrasse is a stone's throw from the headquarters of the Swiss-Liechtenstein fund boutique.
Hummler, a partner in now-defunct private bank Wegelin, will advise 1741 on a diversified peer-to-peer lending fund in Switzerland, a source told finews.com. Aimed at institutional investors, the fund will invest in digital platforms which matching lenders with borrowers directly.
The move cements the comeback of the Swiss banker, who famously flouted the U.S.' crackdown on tax evasion only to pay the ultimate price when his bank collapsed under a U.S. criminal investigation in 2012.
Wegelin Links
The 271-year-old private bank was carved up, renamed Notenstein, and sold to Swiss lender Raiffeisen in 2012. The 1741 fund business later merged with a Vontobel asset management unit, Vescore.
«I looked into peer-to-peer lending even back when I was still with Wegelin. The area definitely has potential and a place in financial services,» Hummler told finews.com. 1741's team has ties to Wegelin.
«We had hired some of the specialists while at Wegelin», Hummler said. The private bank's collapse and subsequent sale of what could be salvaged to Raiffeisen was also the reason that Hummler has been largely silent since then: he and fellow senior partner Otto Bruderer agreed to not work for a banking competitor until this year.
No New Bank?
Last month, he popped up as chairman of Zurich's Private Client Bank, or PBC. «The six-year non-compete clause due to the Notenstein transaction with Raiffeisen has lifted.» He had stayed out of finance during this time, «but now, I'm back in from the cold», he said.
Now retirement age, Hummler said he doesn't want to chase new finance jobs, or to found another bank. «I'm 65. It takes at least ten years for a bank can play its advantages versus the competition.» A talented writer who once penned an ode to napping (in German), Hummler also runs his own consulting firm, M1, and oversees the Hotel Krone in Appenzell.
He shares the St. Gallen office space with Bruderer, who unlike Hummler didn't fully retreat from banking. Bruderer runs the Wegelin wind-down unit Wen AG and is on the board of Credit Europe Bank (Suisse), a Turkish-owned bank in Geneva.
Wegelin Remains Disappear
Ironically, Hummler is celebrating his return to Swiss banking just as the last remnants of Wegelin disappear: two months ago, the successor bank, Notenstein La Roche, was sold to Bank Vontobel, which has said it won't continue the brand.
«The takeover of Notenstein by Vontobel was inevitable», Hummler concludes six years after the grounding of Wegelin. At least Vontobel CEO Zeno Staub is a former «Wegelinner», Hummler notes. «This makes me hopeful for the future.»
