The Swiss bank's top technologist and operating chief is leaving abruptly, in the latest of a series of recent governance curiosities at Raiffeisen.
Rolf Olmesdahl will relinquish his job as Raiffeisen's chief technology and operating officer in coming weeks in mutual agreement with the St. Gallen-based cooperative bank, it said in a statement (in German), without elaborating on the reasons. His deputy Robert Schleich will take over temporarily, the bank said.
His departure comes two months after the exit of another Raiffeisen top executive, Kathrin Wehrli. She and Olmesdahl were romantically linked, Swiss banking blog «Inside Paradeplatz» (in German) reported in September. Raiffeisen maintained at the time that the departure of Wehrli, a former Credit Suisse executive, took care of the resulting governance concerns.
Torrid Governance
The bank has a torrid history of C-suite relationships including that of former CEO Pierin Vincenz and top legal counsel Nadja Ceregato as well as ex-CEO Patrick Gisel with a board member, Laurence de la Serna. Earlier this month, Raiffeisen had replaced Chairman Guy Lachappelle, who stumbled over an affair at his previous job running Basel's cantonal bank.
Olmesdahl spearheaded the bank's Arizon project, a technology joint venture to migrate 246 Raiffeisen member banks onto new software two years ago. Though he has sat on Raiffeisen's top management since joining from Zurich Insurance six years ago, his remit was in 2018 expanded to include information technology, services, and operations.
