Sergio Ermotti

Sergio Pietro Ermotti (born 11 May 1960) is a Swiss investment banker and former stock trader. He has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of UBS Group AG since November 2011, having held the position on an interim basis since September 2011. He previously served as the deputy chief executive officer for Italian bank UniCredit, from 2007 to 2010.

Leading UBS, Ermotti denounced the 2011 rogue trader scandal, implementing strict corporate policies governing community standards and initiated a major restructuring of the bank around private banking and limited its sell side operations. Expected to serve as chief executive until 2022, he is one of the longest serving heads of UBS.

Although Ermotti has not finalized succession plans, it is speculated that he might transition into Swiss politics or assume the chairmanship of UBS, succeeding Axel Weber. He ruled out entering select political races for the Bundesrat stating that he was "not a politician". In addition to English, Ermotti speaks Italian, German, and French fluently.

Sergio Pietro Ermotti was born on 11 May 1960 in Lugano, Switzerland, an Italian-speaking city. He left school at age 15 to pursue aspirations of being a footballer and skier. Before turning 18 and enrolling in college to fulfill theses aspirations, Ermotti decided to fill his time with an apprenticeship at the Cornèr Bank in Lugano to "get up to speed with accounting, finance, and so on". At his apprenticeship, he learned to sell and trade stocks. Although Ermotti did not attend university, he received a Swiss federal banking expert diploma and subsequently attended the Advanced Management Program at Oxford University.

After his apprenticeship as a stockbroker at the Cornèr Bank, Ermotti was later promoted to trading. In 1985, Ermotti moved to Citibank in Zurich where he traded equity-linked products and later served as its Resident Vice President. In 1987, he went on to the Swiss office of the US investment bank Merrill Lynch in Zurich, and stayed with the bank for 16 years. He started with holding various positions in equity derivatives and capital markets, and contributed to the expansion of the capital market business of the bank in french-speaking parts of Switzerland. In 1993, he was promoted to the position of Managing Director and moved to London being in charge for the European equity derivatives unit. Three years later, in 1996, Ermotti relocated to New York, as a head of global derivatives trading. He was eventually promoted to co-head of global equity markets and a member of the executive management committee for global markets & investment banking at Merrill Lynch, where he worked from 2001 to 2003.

He joined the Italian bank UniCredit headquartered in Milan, in December 2005 as head of markets & investment banking. At that point in time, UniCredit took over German bank, HypoVereinsbank (HVB). From 2007, he was UniCredit's deputy chief executive officer with responsibility for the strategic business area, corporate and investment banking and private banking, before leaving in 2010. Ermotti was appointed chairman and chief executive of UBS's Europe, Middle East, and Africa group, and became a member of the group executive board in April 2011. He was appointed interim group CEO in September 2011, and permanently in November 2011. In response to the 2011 UBS rogue trader scandal, Ermotti sent an internal memo stating: "I want to make clear that no one's personal interest nor any amount of revenue is worth more than the bank's reputation".

Because of his new responsibility as CEO, he resigned from his position as a president of Darwin Airline in 2011. Ermotti was a member of the board at the London Stock Exchange between September 2008 and July 2013. In 2012, he tapped a colleague from Merrill Lynch, Andrea Orcel, to lead UBS's investment banking arm, eventually assisting him in navigating the 2013 Libor trading scandal, a major corporate restructuring, and a major expansion of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity. In November 2014, he became the CEO for UBS Group AG permanently. In 2015, the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag named him as the most successful manager of a company listed on the Swiss Market Index. His salary in fiscal year 2017 was estimated to be US$14.9 million.

As of April 2014, Ermotti was married with two children. His favorite movies are George Roy Hill's The Sting and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ermotti speaks fluent Swiss Italian, Swiss German, Swiss French, and English. He supports Italian football club, A.C. Milan.

Ermotti was challenged by Marc Walder, CEO of Swiss media company Ringier and Gianluigi Bianchi, managing partner for Europe of Wealth-X to undertake the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Ermotti holds several mandates:

• Board member of UBS Switzerland AG
• Chairman of the UBS Optimus Foundation board
• Chairman of the Fondazione Ermotti, Lugano
• Board member of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce
• Board member of the Global Apprenticeship Network
• Member of the Institut International d’Etudes Bancaires
• Member of the Saïd Business School global leadership council, University of Oxford

Former:

• From 2007 to February 2012, Ermotti was chairman of the airline Darwin Airline, a regional airline in Switzerland.
• From September 2008 to July 2013, he was a non-executive director of the London Stock Exchange.
• Ermotti was a member of the board of trustees of the Fondazione Lugano per il Polo Culturale, Lugano.
• From 2016 to June 2019, chairman of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce.