Finance
The Triumph of UBS Is Also the Humbling of Swiss Banking
After the fall of Credit Suisse and its hastily arranged merger with its rival—and the return of former UBS chief Sergio Ermotti—Switzerland sees just one big winner and a lot of losers.
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Marcel Ospel, the Swiss banker dubbed “Herr der UBS,” or “Master of UBS,” by his biographer, had a story about what happens when the mighty fall. He built UBS Group AG into a global behemoth, and became one of the leading financial figures of his time, only to see the bank come close to collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.
Scorned as a national failure, Ospel later bumped into a lawyer he knew. He got the cold shoulder. “When I was head of UBS,” Ospel ruefully recalled to the biographer, “this guy would do anything I wanted.”