Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brad Smith discuss news that Sergio Ermotti will return to UBS as the company’s CEO
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk about UBS first. This is, I think, definitely the bigger of these two, right? Sergio Ermotti, who was there and really took the bank out of the financial crisis, shrank down its investment bank, made a lot of changes that the Street saw as positive for the company-- he also, by the way, critically, is a Swiss native. Yes, he's got the Italian last name. He grew up in a town that was Italian Swiss, right? But Ralph Hamers I believe is Dutch, and there had been for the first time two non-Swiss in the chairman and CEO roles at UBS. And so now going back to a Swiss CEO.
BRAD SMITH: Interesting. Well, great thing for Ermotti that that UniCredit job never worked out because ultimately he didn't get that one. However, stepped into the role at UBS. That was back in 2011, as you mentioned.
And what was taking place at UBS at that time, basically he walked right into a trading scandal north of $2 billion that he had to course correct for, not just in the company's kind of brand and name and reputation but also ensuring that they were able to get through a new type of period that every bank was going to be under high scrutiny for what had just happened with the GFC and the financial crisis and the roles that banks had within that.
However, wealth of experience within investment banking and, of course, wealth management as well. So really looked at as this figure who is good at charting turnarounds for companies and specifically within the financial services industry.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. And now, of course, the chairman, Colm Kelleher, also helped sort of rejigger Morgan Stanley when he was there. He was there for 30 years, in fact.
So the other thing I have to wonder is with bringing Ermotti back, does that also help with retention of talent, not just at UBS but at Credit Suisse as the bank takes it over? There's been some reports this week about executives from UBS flying around the world to try to retain key Credit Suisse talent who they don't want walking out the door amidst this takeover. So you wonder how much Ermotti is going to be doing some of the same job even as he tries to rejigger.
And there's one more job or one more pickle, one more challenge, one more wrinkle in UBS's acquisition of Credit Suisse. There's just a report out from a Senate investigation that says that. Credit Suisse is complicit in tax evasion by ultra-wealthy Americans. This is something that it's been out there, and it's sort of when we were talking about Credit Suisse's troubles and looking at the timeline and seeing all the various scandals at the bank, this is something that was periodically popping up. And so, again, this is something that the Senate has released today that now Ermotti's, I guess, going to have to deal with.
BRAD SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, even more coming from Capitol Hill with regard to the broader banking turmoil, of course, today as well.
