Julius Baer Picks Goldman Sachs Veteran Bollinger as New CEO

(Bloomberg) — Julius Baer Group Ltd has hired Stefan Bollinger to be its next chief executive officer, a relatively unknown pick to lead the Swiss wealth manager as it seeks to draw a line under last year’s Signa real estate scandal.

Bollinger will join from Goldman Sachs Group Inc, where he is currently co-head of private wealth management for Europe, the Middle East and Africa based in London, Julius Baer said in a statement on Tuesday. He will start the role no later than February 1, 2025, the bank said.

The appointment of Bollinger, 50, helps Baer Chairman Romeo Lacher set a fresh course after the damaging revelations in November that the bank had run up a $700 million exposure to Rene Benko’s defunct Signa property empire. After taking a steep profit cut for 2023, previous CEO Philipp Rickenbacher stepped down in February, with Deputy CEO Nic Dreckmann running the bank in the interim.

Julius Baer’s shares were up 1% at 12:51 p.m. in Zurich. The stock has risen almost 11% so far this year, though hasn’t fully recovered after a steeper drop in the aftermath of the Benko disclosures. Baer has about 470 billion Swiss francs ($528 billion) in assets under management.

Baer’s new leadership continues the reboot of Swiss finance in the aftermath of the collapse of Credit Suisse and its subsequent takeover by UBS Group AG last year. A newly emboldened financial regulator, Finma, is at the forefront of efforts to put the sector on a stronger footing, at a time when wealth managers face stiffer competition to manage the cash of the global super-rich from other centers like Hong Kong or Dubai. 

Bollinger, a Swiss citizen, will leave Goldman Sachs after two decades at the Wall Street bank where he has also been a partner for 14 years. Prior to that he worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and started his career at Zuercher Kantonalbank.

His appointment brings Baer a seasoned banker with global experience, with Bollinger having had posts including Hong Kong and New York. Baer said his unit at Goldman Sachs more than doubled assets under management over the past five years.

Baer has traditionally been purely focused on wealth management, and expanded during the last decade into Asia and the Middle East after buying Merrill Lynch’s wealth business outside the US and Japan in 2013. 

Bollinger’s selection as CEO means that Baer has chosen a candidate without experience on the executive board of a major listed bank.

“Given the leadership gap at Baer, slightly improved clarity is helpful,” Nicholas Hermann, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in London, said in a note. “We would expect limited share price reaction, as Mr Bollinger will not likely be well-known by the market and it seems unlikely there will be a strategic update for 10-12 months.”

Rickenbacher’s term was initially pitched as a return to stability after a scandal over lax money-laundering controls under previous chief executive Boris Collardi. The Benko affair that broke late last year exposed weak risk controls all the way to the top of the bank. 

Teams that managed credit risk reported to the same person as bankers responsible for loans to private clients such as Benko, leaving a conflict of interest at the bank’s core. Julius Baer has since revamped those reporting lines and shut down the private debt business responsible for the losses. 

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

Julius Baer’s appointment of Stefan Bollinger as CEO looks a good choice, having begun his career in Switzerland, worked in wealth management globally and able to bring a fresh perspective. These are much-needed qualities for Julius Baer to make headway as a standalone private bank.

Kevin Ryan and Lento Tang, Bloomberg Intelligence

(Updates with shares from fourth paragraph)

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