Marcel Ospel

Marcel Louis Ospel (born February 8, 1950 in Basel ; † April 26, 2020 in Wollerau ) was a Swiss bank manager and Chairman of the Board of Directors of UBS .

Life

Ospel grew up in Kleinbasel and completed a commercial apprenticeship as well as the higher business and administration school (HWV) in Basel. He started his career at the age of 27 at the bank, which he remained loyal to until 2008, the then Swiss Bank Corporation (SBV) . There he worked in the central planning and marketing department until 1980. He then moved abroad for four years and worked for SBV in London and New York in the “Capital Markets” division. He then made a detour to Merrill Lynch for three years before he was responsible for securities trading at SBV in Zurich from 1987 to 1990 . In 1990 he was accepted into the management and from 1995 he headed SBC Warburg . From 1996 to 1998 he was President of the Executive Committee of the SBV, after the merger into a major bank with the Swiss Bank Corporation (SBG) he became President of the Executive Committee of UBS.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of UBS

In April 2001 he was elected Chairman of the Board of UBS. A few months later, in autumn, Ospel and his bank came under the crossfire of criticism after the grounding of Swissair .

Ospel was jointly responsible for UBS's billions in losses on the US market in 2007 and 2008, according to a report by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission . In spring 2008, the call for his resignation was loud in financial circles and also in public. After the announcement of another massive write-down of CHF 19 billion on April 1, 2008, which had become unsustainable for UBS, he decided not to run for re-election as Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting on April 23, 2008. As became known on the occasion of the publication of the report “Financial Market Crisis and Financial Market Supervision” by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) on September 14, 2009, Ospel's resignation took place on the date of the General Assembly at that time at the instigation of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission.

Private

As of 2006, Ospel was married to Adriana Ospel-Bodmer, daughter of one of the oldest Zurich families and a doctorate in economics, in third marriage. He had twins with her (* 2009). From his first and second marriage, Ospel had two more children each. In 2018, the business magazine Bilanz estimated his fortune at 175 million Swiss francs.

According to an article in the Basler Zeitung , Ospel was a member of the SVP . He was a passionate carnival drummer in Basel.

In April 2020, Ospel died at the age of 70 after a long period of cancer in Wollerau in the canton of Schwyz , where he last lived.

Awards

• 1997: European Banker of the Year
• In 2005, Ospel received an honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester , United States . The award was given to him for his strategic accomplishments in positioning UBS as a global bank.

literature

• Dirk Schütz: Lord of UBS - The unstoppable rise of Marcel Ospel. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-280-05261-7 .
• Claude Baumann: Washed Out - The Swiss Banks at a Turning Point. Xanthippe, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-9522868-7-7 , pp. 57-70.
• Sebastian Borger : Ospel's world of greed. In: Gambled. Kweku Adoboli and UBS. Stämpfli, Bern 2013, ISBN 978-3-7272-1245-1 .
• Georges Blum: Société de Banque Suisse - Union de Banques Suisses. La vérité et le pourquoi de cette fusion. Favre, Lausanne 2015, ISBN 978-2-8289-1548-3 .
• Marcel Ospel in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Marcel Ospel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Marcel L. Ospel. (pdf; 59 kB) St. Gallen Symposium , May 16, 2003, archived from the original on November 20, 2008 (German, English, curriculum vitae). 
• Report 2006: Marcel Ospel, President. In: USB.com. (French, CV). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Stanley Reed: Marcel Ospel, Architect of the Swiss Bank UBS, Is Dead at 70. In: New York Times , May 22, 2020.
2. ↑ Swiss Federal Banking Commission : Subprime crisis: Investigation by the SFBC on the causes of the value adjustments of UBS AG. (PDF; 286 kB) September 30, 2008, accessed April 3, 2009 . 
3. ↑ Marcel Ospel is no longer available for re-election to the Board of Directors. In: UBS.com. April 1, 2008, archived from the original on February 4, 2009 ; accessed on April 27, 2020 . New horror figures sweep Marcel Ospel off his chair. In: Tages-Anzeiger , April 1, 2008. 
   
4. ↑ Financial market crisis and financial market supervision. (pdf; 821 kB) Swiss Financial Market Authority , September 14, 2009, p. 35 , archived from the original on July 8, 2010 ; accessed on April 27, 2020 . 
5. ^ Daniela Niederberger: Top Manager: Eye for Women. In: Die Weltwoche 19/2003. Archived from the original on February 22, 2013 ; accessed on April 27, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Simone Matthieu: Ospel's shy return to the social arena. In: Tages-Anzeiger . April 24, 2009, archived from the original on April 27, 2009 ; accessed on April 27, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Marcel Ospel. In: handelszeitung .ch. November 2019, accessed April 27, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Arthur Rutishauser: Blocher's most expensive mission. In: Basler Zeitung . December 16, 2011, accessed April 27, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Erik Hasselberg: Former figurehead of UBS - Marcel Ospel dies at the age of 70. In: Bernerzeitung.ch . April 26, 2020, accessed July 16, 2020 . Zoé Baches: Marcel Ospel is dead. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . April 26, 2020, accessed July 16, 2020 .  
10. ↑ European Banker of the Year. In: malekigroup.com . Archived from the original on November 11, 2011 ; accessed on April 27, 2020 . 
11. ^ Dirk Schütz: Book preprint Marcel Ospel: The Ospel system. In: Balance . May 11, 2007, accessed April 27, 2020 (excerpt). 
12. ^ Robert U. Vogler: Settlement with Marcel Ospel. In: finews.ch. December 4, 2015, accessed April 27, 2020 . Hansueli Schöchli: The UBS merger hung by a thin thread. In: nzz.ch . January 16, 2016, accessed July 16, 2020 .