Zurich Insurance wants UBS' top female banker on its board. The move cements ties between the insurer and the Swiss bank.
Zurich Insurance will ask shareholders to vote in Sabine Keller-Busse as a board member at its annual meeting in April, it said in a statement on Wednesday. She became the first woman to run UBS' domestic unit when she took over from Axel Lehmann last week.
Keller-Busse is the only member of UBS' 12-person top management led by Ralph Hamers to sit on the board of a blue-chip company – much less one in the financial services industry. «Her extensive experience in the fields of people management, operations and digitalization complements our board in an ideal way,» Zurich's Chairman Michel Liès said.
Kindred Spirit
There, Keller-Busse is likely to find a kindred spirit in Catherine «Cathy» Bessant, who oversees operations and technology at Bank of America. UBS and Zurich don't directly compete, though the bank has increasingly tapped into the wider insurance ecosystem including by partnering with Swiss Re, the world's largest reinsurer, last summer.
Like Bessant, one of the highest-profile women in U.S. finance, Keller-Busse has spent a good portion of of her career in operations. In fact she will continue to hold part of the operating chief role at UBS alongside her new job, until CEO Ralph Hamers concludes his organizational set-up. UBS didn't comment on Keller-Busse's new board sideline.
Deep Swiss Ties
Ties between insurance and banking traditionally run deep in Switzerland: Swiss Re Chairman Walter Kielholz also presided Credit Suisse for years, and ex-UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti is due to take over from him in April. The reinsurer stocked its board with former luminaries of Credit Suisse including two ex-finance chiefs (Philip Ryan and Renato Fassbind) as well as former risk boss Joachim Oechslin.
Ironically, Axel Lehmann spent 14 years at Zurich before joining first the UBS' board, in 2009, and then its management, in 2016. Keller-Busse is one of two natural in-house candidates, along with private bank co-head Iqbal Khan, for the Swiss bank's top job, finews.com reported last month.