Nikolaus Senn, Former Union Bank of Switzerland CEO, Dies at 88

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Nikolaus Senn, the chief executive officer of Union Bank of Switzerland who guided its expansion during the 1980s before the lender became UBS AG in a merger a decade later, has died. He was 88.

Senn died on Nov. 2 at his home in Herrliberg, Switzerland, after a long illness, his family said in a death notice published in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

His eight-year tenure as CEO was marked by an acquisition- based growth strategy. In 1986, the bank bought London-based stockbroking firm Phillips & Drew and Frankfurt-based Deutsche Laenderbank AG. In 1991, three years after Senn became chairman, Union Bank entered the U.S. market when it acquired Chase Manhattan Corp.’s asset-management unit, which oversaw about $30 billion in investments, the New York Times reported.

Under Senn’s leadership as CEO, Union Bank also opened its first electronic-banking branch in Zurich. He spent more than 40 years at the bank, where he was CEO from 1980 to 1988.

“Thanks to his creative ideas and inventive impulses, he managed to modernize the bank in the 1980s, expand it through acquisitions abroad and prepare it for the increasingly international competition,” Zurich-based UBS said in a separate death notice in Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

In the mid-1980s, the local banking industry was dominated by Union Bank, Swiss Bank Corp. and Credit Suisse, with a combined market share of as much as 50 percent, UBS said in an online history. Neither Swiss Bank nor Union Bank was prominent outside its home market, UBS said.

UBS Merger

UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, is the company that resulted from the 1998 merger between Union Bank and Swiss Bank. The combined lender traces its roots back more than 150 years.

Senn was chairman of Union Bank from 1988 to 1996. In his last year in the post, the bank recorded a loss of 348 million Swiss francs stemming from provisions for losses relating to a domestic mortgage crisis caused by aggressive lending policies, according to UBS.

During the 1990s, Senn’s confrontations with investor Martin Ebner became a fixture of Union Bank’s annual general meetings, which Senn ran with great authority as chairman, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported.

“The temperamental Senn didn’t think to run the general meetings as a moderator,” it said in an article late yesterday. “He was the top dog and leader. Whoever expressed an opinion that he didn’t like was immediately reprimanded. Senn was a knockout, verbally and physically.”

Early Life

Born on Oct. 22, 1926, in Herisau, Switzerland, Senn studied jurisprudence at universities in Freiburg, Germany, as well as Zurich, Lausanne and Bern, Switzerland.

Awarded a doctorate, he worked for a law firm in St. Gallen before joining Union Bank, also known as SBG for its German name, in 1951. After five years at the Swiss Banking Association in Basel, he returned to Union Bank in 1959 and became head of the finance department in 1965. He started as general manager in charge of finance in 1968, remaining in the job until he became CEO in 1980.

Senn is survived by his wife, Charlotte, to whom he was married for 62 years, as well as two daughters and a son, according to finews.ch, a Swiss financial-news website.

–With assistance from Elena Logutenkova in Zurich.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Henry in Frankfurt at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Charles W. Stevens at [e-mail] Cindy Roberts