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Raiffeisen's new Chairman Guy Lachappelle is hardly known outside of Basel. As head of Basler Kantonalbank since 2013, the father of five has proven himself an agile and perspicacious banker.  

«There are five children in his patchwork family,» Basler Kantonalbank, or BKB, described Guy Lachappelle five years ago when he clinched the top job at the bank. The move was meant to signal that Lachappelle isn't hiding anything, and he is one of us. 

Now, Lachappelle has named to lead the Swiss lender Raiffeisen through the biggest crisis of its 219-year history. To be sure, the crisis hasn't hit Raiffeisen's business (at least, not yet). Lachappelle instead needs to repair the scorched earth left behind by former longstanding CEO Pierin Vincenz's power play and potentially criminal activity inside the cooperatively-organized bank.

Daunting Task

The task awaiting Lachappelle is daunting: he needs to find a new CEO to replace Patrik Gisel, who as a close associate of Vincenz's was felled by the scandal, rebuild Raiffeisen's corporate governance, sooth a furor among Raiffeisen's member banks, and present a strategic vision for Switzerland's largest mortgage lender. 

Is Lachappelle up for it? At the very least, the 57-year-old Swiss banker didn't fail in a similar role as CEO of BKB. The bank stands out as one of Switzerland's more progressive cantonal banks which wants to have a say on how banking and client behavior will change and designs on digital inroads with various initiatives.

Clean-Up CEO

Lachappelle's most important job when he arrived at BKB was to clean up: his predecessor, Rudolf Matter, left the bank following a fraud scandal around counterparty ASE, an investment manager.

Lachappelle himself was also involved in the ASE scandal: he joined BKB in 2010 as head of lending, shortly before the ASE scandal surfaced. The investment manager had cheated hundreds of clients, using BKB's Zurich branch as its deposit bank.

Hans Ringger, then head of the Zurich branch, attempted to discredit Lachappelle in testimony to regulator Finma. The banker successfully countered and defeated the accusations, paving the way for the top spot (perhaps not incidentally, BKB no longer maintains a Zurich branch).