Marcel Louis Ospel (8 February 1950 – 26 April 2020) was a Swiss banker and the longtime head of the multinational

investment bank Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...

UBS.

Career

Ospel started his banking career as an apprentice at a small Swiss bank in 1965 with a monthly salary of CHF 110. He pursued further education in Switzerland and abroad, and joined the marketing and planning division of the

Swiss Bank Corporation Swiss Bank Corporation was a Swiss investment bank and financial services company located in Switzerland. Prior to its merger, the bank was the third largest in Switzerland with over CHF300 billion of assets and CHF11.7 billion of equ ...

(SBC) in 1977. He rose to become the bank's head and the architect of its 1998 merger with the Union Bank of Switzerland to what is now UBS. The new bank, of which he became CEO, was then the second-largest bank in the world. Ospel stepped down as CEO in 2001 to become chairman of the board of directors, but retained tight operational control over UBS. In this role, he refused to continue financing the ailing national airline Swissair and was considered by many to share responsibility for its collapse in 2001. His annual salary of up to CHF 26 million – exceptional in Switzerland but less so in international banking – was another topic of frequent controversy during his tenure as chairman. In the 2000s, Ospel pursued an aggressive growth strategy in investment banking and structured finance, acquiring

Paine Webber PaineWebber & Co. was an American investment bank and stock brokerage firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS in 2000. The company was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts, by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G. Webber. Operating with t ...

among others, and was considered to be one of the most powerful men in Switzerland. But his strategy resulted in CHF 80 billion of losses to UBS with the collapse of UBS's

Dillon Read Dillon, Read & Co. was an investment bank based in New York City. In 1991, it was acquired by Barings Bank and, in 1997, it was acquired by Swiss Bank Corporation, which was in turn acquired by UBS in 1998. History Carpenter & Vermilye Dillon Rea ...

investment bank during the

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. Ospel was forced to resign in April 2008, following pressure by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, and UBS had to seek a government bailout in October 2008. In retirement, Ospel remained active as a private investor, but remained a target of public criticism and occasional protests on account of his former salary and his leadership of UBS.

Personal life

Ospel was born to a middle-class family in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

. He later lived in

Wollerau Wollerau is a municipality in Höfe District in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. It lies on the upper Zürichsee. Geography Wollerau has an area, , of . Of this area, 56.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 13.6% is forested. Of th ...

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 ...

. Ospel died on 26 April 2020 of cancer at his home in Wollerau.Stanley Reed
''Marcel Ospel, Architect of the Swiss Bank UBS, Is Dead at 70.''
In: ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 22. Mai 2020. He is survived by his third wife Adriana Bodmer and his six children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ospel, Marcel 1950 births 2020 deaths 20th-century Swiss businesspeople UBS people 21st-century Swiss businesspeople Swiss bankers Swiss chief executives Swiss investors Businesspeople from Basel-Stadt Deaths from cancer in Switzerland