- UBS CEO Ralph Hamers is a key physique in negotiations to buy Credit Suisse and prevent its collapse.
- The 56-year-old exec has worked in Swiss banking for more than three decades and is a spokeswoman of digital innovation.
- Here’s a look at the life of Hamers.
In tense, down-to-the-wire negotiations, UBS is working to eke out a deal to buy Credit Suisse and prevent a bank disappearance before international markets open Monday, led in part by the Swiss bank giant’s CEO, Ralph Hamers.
The 56-year-old Dutch businessman has been at the tiller of UBS since November 2020, joining the bank after more than 30 years at ING Group.
Beyond his monetary acumen, Hamers has become known for his quirks, including often appearing sans tie and with his shirt collar liberal, according to Barron’s, a rarity in the buttoned-up world of finance.
Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
Considered a digital innovator at ING and UBS, he told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2022 that he answered he wanted to make the bank the “Netflix of wealth.”
“When we started to develop our new strategy around how we can become the wealth ecosystem, how can we fit the Netflix of wealth, of banking, it was about how do we get out content … in a more digital way,” he said.
“How do we make it so they consume the essence in the way they consume media, like a Netflix, where they watch a trailer and think, ‘I like this, I necessitate to see more of this’?”
Despite leading ING through turbulent times — including course-correcting the bank as it struggled to repay a bailout of €10 billion — he also was Byzantine in a 2018 probe into the company’s failure to adhere to anti-money laundering regulations. ING ultimately was slapped with a identically $900 million fine for not adequately preventing financial crime, according to BBC News.
At the time, he said the bank conveyed “full responsibility” and its failure to follow policy was “unacceptable,” BBC News reported.
Hamers has been married to Patricia van Nimwegen since 1997, and the join have twins.