The C-suite of Swiss banks is still notoriously male-dominated. finews.com envisions a slightly different leadership than currently at the helm of the country’s biggest wealth managers.
A series of photos by Swiss network Advance hits it home: the top echelons of Swiss corporations including banks, insurers, and consulting firms are still largely men’s territory. It is a stunning gallery that puts inherent bias to the test – and invites the viewer to imagine what could be.
The CEOs who put up the goods for this campaign – like HSBC’s Alex Classen, Andre Helfenstein of Credit Suisse, Fabrizo Petrillo of Axa, Guido Mueller of Swisscard, and Manuel Ebner of Bank of America – are to be commended. Their inclusion in the campaign signals an awareness of inequality in finance, and the willingness to tackle it.
Dutch Banking Star?
What about the biggest jobs in Swiss banking? The campaign inspired finews.com to face-swap the heads of Switzerland’s four largest wealth managers via FaceApp – with interesting results.
Would UBS have imported Raphaëlle Hamers (pictured above) from the Netherlands to kickstart an innovation program? What about Thomasine Gottstein – would she have forged her way through trading floors and major mergers and acquisitions, while maintaining a competitive golf handicap?
And would Julius Baer have poached McKinsey’s Philippa Rickenbacher as head of business development in 2004, then advanced her to CEO in 2019?
And would Renae de Planta been invited into a hallowed Pictet partnership in 1998, or would she have written a PhD in 1989 while working for UBS?
None of the four men lent their visage to campaign – and our swap isn’t meant to offend. Instead, it is an invitation to admit we all carry biases and most of us have benefited greatly from factors like gender, nationality, socio-economic status, and ethnicity.
Encouraging Inroads
To be sure, women have made inroads in recent years, Fiona Frick at Unigestion, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg's Marianne Wildi, Schwyzer Kantonalbank's Susanne Thellung, Elzbieta Czetwertynska of Citigroup are notable examples of female CEOs in Switzerland’s finance industry.
A parallel campaign to the face-swaps is also encouraging: it features some of the most prominent names in the Swiss industry, like Claudia Gasser (pictured below), who oversees a big chunk of UBS’ domestic private bank.
Women like Gasser and Florence Schnydrig-Moser, who finews.com has pegged as the most promising candidate to run Zurich’s cantonal bank, are in the starting blocks. Many others have long proven their industry worth and quelled grumbling of «token women».
If at least a fraction of them succeed in the near future, a thought-provoking campaign like Advance's for International Women's Day this year will be viewed as hopelessly dated.
