Can Super Mario Save Swissair?

It was once one of the smoothest-running airlines in Europe. So it has been a shock to investors to witness the mounting disarray at Swissair, Switzerland's flag carrier. In January, Swissair's parent company, SAirGroup, jettisoned CEO Philippe Bruggisser, who had charted the expansion strategy that plunged the company into the red. Then Moritz Suter, airline division chief, bailed out on Mar. 7. The following week, the company said that 9 of its 10 supervisory board members would quit, including Chairman and interim CEO Eric Honegger--a tacit acknowledgment that they had endorsed a bad strategy. "We've never seen anything like this in Switzerland," says Hans-Jacob Heitz, leader of a group of dissident shareholders.

Enter Super Mario. That's how the new CEO, Mario Corti, is known in Switzerland. Corti, the chief financial officer of Swiss food giant Nestle, is the only board member left at the airline. Since he joined in April, 2000, Corti wasn't tainted by the ill-fated alliance strategy which drove the company to buy sizable minority stakes in half a dozen troubled airlines. And he has impressive credentials: Corti vastly improved Nestle's relations with its investors, served once as deputy head of banking at the Swiss central bank, and even holds a pilot's license. "He's a very creative financial guy, and he has strong personal connections," says Joel Markus, chairman of consulting firm Korn Ferry's central European operations. "You need a fast solution here."