Martin Ebner (born 12 August 1945) is a Swiss
billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...
businessman and investor from the municipality of
Freienbach in the
canton of Schwyz
The canton of Schwyz (german: Kanton Schwyz rm, Chantun Sviz; french: Canton de Schwytz; it, Canton Svitto) is a canton in central Switzerland between the Alps in the south, Lake Lucerne to the west and Lake Zürich in the north, centred on ...
. He is the founder of
BZ Bank, and the investment firm,
BZ Group. Through his investment vehicle Patinex, he owns multimillion-dollar stakes in various companies, and his biggest holdings include healthcare company
Vifor Pharma
CSL Vifor is a global specialty pharmaceuticals company in the treatment areas of iron deficiency, dialysis, nephrology & rare disease. It is headquartered in Switzerland and consists of CSL Vifor, Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma (VFM ...
, software firm
Temenos, and real estate investor
Intershop.
Life and education
Ebner grew up in
Hurden
Hurden is a village in the municipality of Freienbach in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. First mentioned in 1217, the name "de Hurden" was used for the peninsula and for the fish traps made of woven work, called "Hürden" or "Hurden", which w ...
near
Pfäffikon SZ. He studied
law at the
University of Zurich,
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, graduating
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...
as lic.iur. and earned a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in
business administration
Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
from the
University of Florida
The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
.
Career
Before founding
BZ Bank in 1985, and the investment firm,
BZ Group in 1988,
Ebner worked for
Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global " ...
, and
Bank Vontobel, where he was a member of the executive board.
He is a major shareholder of
Helvetic Airways
Helvetic Airways (Previously Odette Airways) is a Swiss regional airline headquartered in Kloten with its fleet stationed at Zurich Airport. It operates flights to destinations in Europe and Northern Africa, mainly leisure markets, on its own beh ...
, a Swiss low cost airline. In 2018, Ebner has signed a 600 million francs deal with Brazilian aircraft maker
Embraer
Embraer S.A. () is a Brazilian multinational aerospace manufacturer that produces commercial, military, executive and agricultural aircraft, and provides aeronautical services. It was founded in 1969 in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, where i ...
for delivery of 12 new aircraft.
Rise
In 1988, Ebner founded BZ Gruppe Holding Aktiengesellschaft. In addition to BZ Bank, their holdings included BZ Trust Aktiengesellschaft, an asset management company, as well as controlling interests in four investment companies founded by Ebner and traded on the stock exchange (BK Vision, Pharma Vision, Stillhalter Vision, Spezialitäten Vision). In the press, they were occasionally referred to as Ebner's "Visions", after the common component of their names.
In addition, over the course of time, Ebner acquired significant stakes in various public and private companies, including
Alusuisse and
Lonza Group
Lonza Group is a Swiss multinational manufacturing company for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and nutrition sectors, headquartered in Basel, with major facilities in Europe, North America and South Asia. Lonza was established under that name in ...
,
Asea Brown Boveri,
Credit Suisse Group
Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global " ...
,
Roche Holding,
Union Bank of Switzerland,
Winterthur Group
Axa Winterthur is a multinational insurance company. The original company named Winterthur was founded in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1875. From 1997 to June 2006, Winterthur was a Credit Suisse (CS) subsidiary. Now, Paris-based Axa Insurance has e ...
, as well as
Intershop Holding. Ebner was a long-term investor.
Ebner focused on equities as the most promising long-term investment category. He also tried to influence the management of the companies in which he invested and on some of whose supervisory boards he sat, in the spirit of shareholder value. He also called for a reduction in the size of supervisory bodies and for management compensation to be based not only on a company's profits, but also on the risks involved. In order to assert his shareholders' rights, Ebner also took legal action in individual cases, with the proceedings against the members of the Board of Directors of the then
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and the company itself becoming particularly well known. At times, the portfolio of investments held by BZ Group was worth over 30 billion Swiss francs. However, the share of debt capital was high.
Through aggressive advertising, Ebner also tried to attract small investors as customers for BZ Bank and introduced the BZ share account for them.
Crisis
The creeping decline of BZ Group Holding began with the sharp fall in share prices on the international stock markets that lasted for months after the bursting of the
Internet bubble in 2000/2001 and the
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Suicide attack, suicide List of terrorist incidents, terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, ...
. BZ Group, including the investment companies it managed, was hit disproportionately hard by the stock market slump due to its concentration on a small number of investments. A standstill agreement concluded with the lending banks in the summer of 2002 enabled the BZ Group to continue as a going concern. However, Ebner was forced to sell or transfer the majority of its holdings to the banks. This also affected controlling interests in the vision companies, which were transferred to
Zürcher Kantonalbank
Zurich Cantonal Bank (german: Zürcher Kantonalbank, or ZKB) is the largest cantonal bank and fourth largest bank in Switzerland, as well as the leading financial services provider in the Greater Zurich area, with total assets of over CHF 150 bil ...
.
The BZ Group was left with a majority stake in the listed real estate company Intershop as its main holding. The core of BZ Group, BZ Bank, was spun off from BZ Group in the spring of 2003 by Martin Ebner and his wife Rosmarie, together with management members Alfred Böni and Ralph Stadler, and has since continued to be run separately.
Recovery
Since the termination of the standstill agreement with the lending banks in July 2003, BZ Group Holding has recovered. In 2005, the holding company of the Group changed its name to Patinex AG and has been operating under this name since then. In the same year, Patinex acquired 12.5 percent of the reinsurer
Converium and thus played a decisive role in the - initially hostile - takeover of Converium by the French reinsurance group
SCOR. With a stake of around 8 percent, Ebner was the largest shareholder in SCOR via Patinex until the stake was sold in spring 2015. The stake in Intershop today amounts to around 33 percent. Patinex's other disclosed holdings include the Swiss listed companies Myriad, Temenos (since 2013) and
Vifor Pharma
CSL Vifor is a global specialty pharmaceuticals company in the treatment areas of iron deficiency, dialysis, nephrology & rare disease. It is headquartered in Switzerland and consists of CSL Vifor, Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma (VFM ...
. In the unlisted sector, Patinex holds a major stake in the Geneva-based immunology company NovImmune, among others.
In 2008, Patinex acquired the Swiss airline
Helvetic Airways
Helvetic Airways (Previously Odette Airways) is a Swiss regional airline headquartered in Kloten with its fleet stationed at Zurich Airport. It operates flights to destinations in Europe and Northern Africa, mainly leisure markets, on its own beh ...
and its associated flight school Horizon Swiss Flight Academy.
The Ebner couple ceded 70 percent of their stake in BZ Bank to
Graubündner Kantonalbank as of July 1, 2022.
Assets
According to Bilanz's richest list, his wealth in 2021 is 3 to 3.5 billion Swiss francs.
Personal life
He is married to Rosemarie, and lives in
Wilen
Wilen is a municipality in the district of Münchwilen in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. Prior to Thurgau's 1998 reorganisation, Wilen was known as Wilen bei Wil and was part of Rickenbach bei Wil, which was then broken up into the muni ...
, Switzerland.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ebner, Martin
1945 births
Swiss billionaires
Swiss company founders
Swiss chief executives
University of Zurich alumni
University of Florida alumni
Credit Suisse people
People from Münchwilen District
Living people