Never content with the role as a mere financial investor, Martin Ebner is admired as a financier and feared as a corporate raider. His career was unparalleled in Switzerland.
Inspired by corporate raids in the U.S. which were popular in the 70ties through to the 90ties, Martin Ebner used his voting rights to shake up corporations including, Swiss Re, Roche, ABB, Alusuisse and Lonza, requiring them to undertake measures to improve returns for shareholders.
Shortly before his 75th birthday two years ago, the childless billionaire told the media that settling his estate would be his greatest challenge for the next few years.
Now Ebner is selling BZ Bank to the state-run Graubuendner Kantonalbank. This isn’t the first time that he has made a deal with a cantonal bank as finews.com reported.
Emergency sale
Rewind to August 2002, when Ebner's BZ Group Holding was forced to sell its majority holdings in several Swiss listed companies -including BK Vision, Pharma Vision, Spezialitaeten Vision and Stillhalter Vision - to Zuercher Kantonalbank (ZKB) after the group’s investments had been caught in the maelstrom of the dot-com crash.
Before the crash, Ebner and his BZ Group had amassed assets of over 5 billion Swiss francs, but Ebner’s investment empire, which was heavily leveraged, was not able to withstand the stock market blowups of 2001 and 2002, pushing him and his business to the brink.
Fairytale Comeback
The gloating among those who had been at the receiving end of his actions was all the greater when his heavily indebted BZ Group only narrowly avoided bankruptcy.
But Ebner got himself back on his feet and his fortune returned to prior dimensions.
Some put his fairytale comeback down to a combination of analytical brilliance and entrepreneurial qualities. The sale of his life’s work BZ Group to Graubuendner Kantonalbank could be his greatest exploit yet.
