Captain of Swiss industry Rainer E. Gut dies

Keystone / Gaetan Bally

The former business leader Rainer E. Gut, who transformed Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA) into the global banking group Credit Suisse, has died aged 91.

UBS, which took over Credit Suisse earlier this year, confirmed a report by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). UBS expressed its deepest condolences to Gut’s family, the bank said in a statement. Gut had played a decisive role in shaping Swiss economic history, it said.

+ UBS smashes banking record as it absorbs Credit Suisse

Gut was born in 1932 as the son of the director of the Zug Cantonal Bank. He chose the same line of business as his father and began his professional career in the world of finance in New York. In 1973 he became a member of the executive board of SKA, and from 1982 he chaired the board of directors.

Gut transformed the credit institution into a globally active banking group called Credit Suisse Group. He integrated, among others, the US investment bank First Boston, Bank Leu and Winterthur Insurance. Thousands of jobs were cut owing to the rationalisation measures.

From Credit Suisse to Nestlé and Grasshoppers

In 2000 Gut stepped down as chairman of the board of directors of Credit Suisse, but he remained honorary chairman until 2023. He held mandates at other international companies, such as Swiss Re, Swissair and Nestlé. He chaired the food company from 2000 to 2005.

Gut was one of the most influential men in the Swiss economy. He often pulled the strings in the background, which also earned him accusations of interference. The criticism was particularly loud after the grounding of national airline Swissair in 2001, in which some of his faithful supporters from Credit Suisse and the Radical Liberal Party in Zurich were involved. But Gut pulled more strings when it came to financing a new airline.

+ Swissair collapse still reverberates

The economy also relied on him at the end of the 1990s when the dispute over dormant assets from the Second World War escalated. He is said to have been instrumental in the $1.25 billion settlement with Jewish class action plaintiffs.

As a patron of Zurich football club Grasshoppers, whom he helped financially between 1999 and 2003 together with Fritz Gerber, Gut also left his mark on the national sporting world. With his and Gerber’s support, the Swiss record champions celebrated their last two of 27 championship titles in 2001 and 2003.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].