For Raiffeisen Switzerland to lose one chairman within three years may be regarded as misfortune but to lose two looks like carelessness so the bank has appointed a new headhunter and hopes to make an appointment by the end of the year.

Raiffeisen Switzerland can’t wait to put its experience of Guy Lachappelle as the bank’s chairman firmly behind it.

This is not because of his merits as a hands-on chairman who drove change but because of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his unseemly departure at the end of July.

For a long time, Lachappelle seemed to be the right man to reunite and modernize the organization of the cooperative, the third largest banking group in Switzerland.

Process Already Started

The bitter irony is that Lachappelle's bumbling attempts to keep an affair which had gone sour out of the public eye damaged Raiffeisen's reputation. He had been brought in as a clean skin to repair the reputational damage done by former CEO Pierin Vincenz.

Lachappelle was forced to resign in July after an earlier affair turned toxic and the banker was accused by his former lover of passing on insider information and «stalking». As CEO of Basler Cantonal Bank, the now 60-year-old had passed on a strategy presentation to his then lover by email.

Now Pascal Gantenbein is back as interim chairman, but the interregnum should be brief. A spokeswoman for Raiffeisen Switzerland said the search for a successor had already been started and the nomination of a new Raiffeisen chairman should take place by the end this year. «A successor will be nominated at an extraordinary general meeting,» she said.

Things will be different to the 2018 appointment process. First of all, Guido Schilling won’t be the executive search company commissioned to screen candidates. The Zurich headhunter had already worked with Lachappelle when he was still CEO of the Basel Cantonal Bank.

«One Bank, One Vote»

Secondly, the Raiffeisen board will nominate the new chairman, but he or she will no longer be elected by Raiffeisen delegates, but by the Raiffeisen banks under the «One Bank, One Vote» system. Even after the various mergers between regional Raiffeisen banks, there are still 219 of them.

According to the spokeswoman, a delegation from the individual Raiffeisen banks will also be involved in the search process. These delegates will be a «sounding board», i.e. a consultative body. However, these delegates do not have the power to decide nominations.

Thomas Rauber Leading Search

Nominations and Compensation Committee Chairman Thomas Rauber will be the director leading the search for Lachapelle’s successor. Olivier Roussy and Karin Valenzano Rossi are also members of the committee. Interim Chairman Gantenbein is unlikely to have a say this time.

Not Completely Transparent

Sources have told finews.com that Lachappelle was open with both the Raiffeisen board and Guido Schilling about his affair.

However, what Lachappelle did not tell them about was the potential breach of commercial confidentiality at the Basel Cantonal Bank. He also thought he could keep a lid on the story by heavy-handed legal action.

Major Challenge

Raiffeisen’s board now faces a major challenge: after Vincenz, Chairman Johannes Rüegg-Stürm, Vincenz's successor Patrik Gisel and now Lachappelle, the cooperative bank has made four poor leadership choices.

Raiffeisen needs a top banker with the highest levels of integrity and long experience of the Swiss business world. It cannot afford another mistake.