FirstFT: Sergio Ermotti returns to UBS

UBS has turned to its former chief executive Sergio Ermotti to lead the complex and challenging integration of its rival Credit Suisse following this month’s forced takeover by Swiss regulators and banking authorities.

Ermotti, who was chief executive for nine years before stepping down in 2020, is replacing Ralph Hamers, UBS announced this morning.

The new chief executive, who will start on April 5, faces the immediate challenge of combining the two Zurich-based banks as rivals seek to capitalise on the turmoil at two of Europe’s largest financial institutions.

Julius Baer, Pictet, Lombard Odier, EFG and LGT are among the wealth managers attempting to poach clients and bankers from Credit Suisse as steep bonus cuts and job losses force bankers into the market.

Ermotti is a career banker who completed stints at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UniCredit before moving to UBS. He served as chair of Swiss reinsurer Swiss Re and held a board position at fashion group Ermenegildo Zegna after leaving UBS in November 2020. (Read more about the 62-year-old’s career.)

• 🎧 Inside the UBS takeover of Credit Suisse: In this week’s edition of the Behind the Money podcast, banking editor Stephen Morris explains how the shotgun marriage was brokered.

Here’s what else I’m watching today:

• Silicon Valley Bank hearings: US regulators face a second day of questioning by lawmakers into the collapse of SVB, having been accused of being ‘asleep at the wheel’ yesterday.

• Howard Schultz vs Bernie Sanders: The Starbucks founder and billionaire will face off with the liberal firebrand senator in a congressional showdown over the coffee company’s approach to unionising workers.

• Economic data: Home sales data is expected to show that pending sales in the US declined in February compared with January.

• King Charles’s state visit to Germany: The British monarch begins his postponed trip to continental Europe after riots in France delayed the start of the state visit.

What did you think of today’s FirstFT? Let us know at [email protected]. Thanks for reading.

Five more top stories

1. EXCLUSIVE: JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon will be deposed in the Jeffrey Epstein lawsuits over his bank’s decision to retain the late sex offender as a client, said people familiar with the matter. The sworn deposition is due to take place behind closed doors in May.

2. Tesla’s move to slash prices in China has backfired as Elon Musk’s company loses market share to Warren Buffett-backed BYD. Sales by Chinese carmakers are on course to overtake foreign rivals in the country this year for the first time.

3. China has threatened to retaliate if Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen meets US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during an upcoming trip to the US. Tsai leaves Taiwan today and is scheduled to meet McCarthy in California during a 10-day trip that will also take in Guatemala and Belize.

4. Mike Pence must testify to a grand jury about conversations he had with Donald Trump relating to the former president’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

5. US prosecutors have accused former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried of paying a $40mn bribe to one or more Chinese government officials in order to regain access to trading accounts. The allegation was made in a revised indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan yesterday.

The Big Read

In a complex tale traced through ghost ships, shell companies, triad networks, underground financing channels and sprawling family connections, the FT investigates North Korea’s oil smuggling, shedding new light on how dictator Kim Jong Un has propped up Pyongyang’s shattered economy through murky intelligence and financing operations in Hong Kong and Macau.

We’re also reading . . . 

• US backlash against Benjamin Netanyahu: The planned overhaul of Israel’s judicial system has triggered criticism among some of the Jewish state’s most ardent supporters in the US.

• Brazil: Former president Jair Bolsonaro is expected to return to Brazil tomorrow for the first time since leaving office. His aim is to revitalise the country’s far-right movement but he faces a ban from politics and possible arrest.

• GPT-4: The Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence system is showing less openness in the race to commercialise chatbots.

Chart of the day

Why, 15 years after the start of the last financial crisis, might we be seeing that of another? Neither a period of ultra-low interest rates imposed by central banks nor the cult of the bailout provides the complete answer, writes Martin Wolf. So who, or what, is to blame?

Take a break from the news

Twice married, and best known via party pictures in the Spanish tabloids, Marta Ortega Pérez had been dismissed frequently by the chauvinistic media as being a showjumping socialite. But no one at Inditex and Zara, co-founded by her father, was ruffled when she took over as non-executive chair last year. Read HTSI’s exclusive interview with her on succession, sustainability and sales.

Additional contributions by Tee Zhuo and Amanda Chu