Oswald Grubel Joins UBS, Tries To Undo Damage Of Marcel Ospel Mistakes
Oswald Grubel, the former head of Credit Suisse with eyes that point in different directions, has turned to the dark side and signed up as chief exec of his former arch rivals, the beleagured UBS.
When Grubel quit Credit Suisse, he said “my work is done” – he managed to turn the bank around and integrate its wealth management, asset management and investment banking units into one organisation. Now he’s got some serious work to get done at UBS, who are the European bank most exposed to US toxic assets, and who just fumbled a tax probe very badly, ending up with a tarnished reputation and a $780m fine. Is he brave, or just a colossal sucker? More importantly, why is he continuing to let Credit Suisse use the most unflattering corporate portrait ever, left, as his official photo on their website?
He replaces Marcel Rohner, who was head of private banking at the time of the tax allegations against UBS. Those are that UBS allowed 52,000 Americans to have accounts that evaded US taxes – last week they admitted to it, and payed the aforementioned fine along with handing over around 250 names of the worst offenders. What’s got to hurt Rohner is the news that the UBS stock price rose after the news that he was gone – someone go give that guy a rub on the back and tell him it was probably just a freak one-off.
The tax thing hasn’t completely gone away though, as the US are still pursuing the case of Raoul Weil, the former CEO of global wealth management at UBS. Weil is the person specifically accused of helping all those Yanks avoid taxation; he’s run away from it all, and has been named a fugitive. When they catch up with him, he could face 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
But while the tax issue is terrible for the UBS brand, the real sting is in the massive investment in US asset-backed securities, ie subprime mortgages and the like. They’ve led UBS to lose 19.7 billion Swiss francs, including 8.1 billion francs during the last quarter. Everyone needs a Fred Goodwin-esque effigy to take their anger out on when numbers like that start flying around, and for the Swiss it’s Marcel Ospel, the former chair of UBS. He bought up $100bn in US securities, eventually losing $38bn on them. “I’d like to say to him: ‘You’ve damaged Swiss banking,’”, said one Swiss citizen interviewed by Bloomberg, with all the incandescent rage that saw them avoid two world wars.
Just as Young Jeezy layed into Madoff, so the cream of Swiss rap, some guy called Gimma, is giving Ospel a faux-gangsta kicking. He rocked up outside Ospel’s house and performed a track, ending his performance by leaving 60 francs, a supermarket voucher and two cans of beer outside, presumably in some highly symbolic Swiss beef. Check it out below, taking time to note their sweet airbrushed van depicting Gimma and his bros wielding pitchforks:
New boy Grubel, meanwhile, is a fan of the tedious “sports” that all rich male execs like, Formula 1 and golf, and is a hearty proponent of globalisation, saying: “I can see problems in those areas where globalization is pursued only half-heartedly.” He’s also known as “Saint Ossi” after his turnaround of Credit Suisse. He enters a UBS desperately scrabbling around for cash by suing the people it foolishly invested in, trying to pass the buck -somehow he’s got to get their self-respect back after years of bungling, but it doesn’t look like it’ll happen for a while.
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | February 26, 2009 12:11PM |
