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Exit leaves barely any senior managers from failed Swiss bank remaining at combined group

The former head of Credit Suisse’s wealth management business, Francesco de Ferrari, has become the latest executive of the fallen bank to leave UBS.

Less than a year after UBS’s rescue of Credit Suisse, just a handful of Credit Suisse senior managers remain at the enlarged Swiss bank, including former chief executive Ulrich Körner.

De Ferrari was head of Credit Suisse’s wealth management business, its most important division, and was seen by some internally as a potential future chief executive. But he missed out on an executive position at UBS after it took over its former rival last year.

The 54-year-old — who rejected a job at Goldman Sachs at the age of 20 to work with Mother Teresa in India — left UBS at the end of the year and is serving a period of gardening leave, according to people with knowledge of his position.

De Ferrari had been serving as a senior adviser to Iqbal Khan, the head of UBS’s wealth management business, since last summer. Swiss financial news outlet Tippinpoint was first to report his departure.

Born in the US and with dual Italian and Swiss citizenship, de Ferrari began his career as an auditor, before working at Credit Suisse between 2002 and 2018. He then moved to Australia, where he became chief executive of wealth manager AMP Capital.

De Ferrari had a bruising stint at the top of AMP, which was criticised over its handling of a sexual harassment case, while shareholders were unhappy over the group’s dealmaking record.

He was brought back to Credit Suisse at the start of 2022 to rejuvenate its wealth management division as part of a broad restructure under chair António Horta-Osório and chief executive Thomas Gottstein.

But less than a year later, under a new chair and chief executive, the bank underwent another restructuring.

In addition to Körner, the only other Credit Suisse executive board members still employed by UBS are André Helfenstein, who ran the domestic business; Christine Graeff, the head of people; and Nita Patel, the chief compliance officer.

Their roles will be reassessed when the UBS and Credit Suisse legal entities are merged this year.

Last year brought the departures of former Credit Suisse chief financial officer Dixit Joshi, general counsel Markus Diethelm, head of the Asia-Pacific region Edwin Low, co-head of the investment bank David Miller, co-head of markets Ken Pang, chief technology and operations officer Joanne Hannaford and chief operating officer Francesca McDonagh. 

More than 16,000 staff left the combined group in 2023, with tens of thousands more jobs expected to go in the coming years as the bank focuses on hitting cost-reduction targets.

UBS declined to comment and de Ferrari did not respond by the time of publication.

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Advanced economies break link between growth and carbon pollution but developing economies remain dependent

The world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy rose yet again to a new high in 2023 despite fossil fuel use falling in the advanced economies of the EU and US, the latest International Energy Agency report shows.

Emissions reached a record 37.4bn tonnes as droughts and rising energy demand pushed up fossil fuel use, a rise of 1.1 per cent, or 410mn tonnes, compared to the year before.

This runs counter to the need for emissions to be cut by almost 45 per cent by 2030 to limit long-term global warming to no more than 1.5C since the pre-industrial era. Already the rise in temperatures is at least 1.1C, and last year was the hottest on record.

Higher emissions from India and China helped offset reductions in the EU and the US, as the developing economies remained heavily reliant on coal to meet energy demand even as they also develop cleaner energy. 

The IEA painted a more positive picture over the longer-term, saying energy-related emissions were in “a structural slowdown” thanks to the growth of clean energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels.  

Overall, emissions growth over the past five years would have been about three times higher without the development of cleaner energy technologies, the IEA said. 

Significantly, economies such as the US and the EU managed to cut energy-related emissions despite economic growth, weakening the historic correlation between the two.

“The clean energy transition is continuing apace and reining in emissions,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, adding that the sector had shown “resilience” through the pandemic and energy crisis. 

The total level of emissions includes those from burning fossil fuels for energy, as well as industrial processes such as cement-making, and flaring from oil and gas.

The IEA report highlighted the effect of the weather on emissions: droughts, worsened by the El Niño weather pattern that warms the Pacific Ocean, drove a record fall in output from hydropower plants.

Fossil fuel power plants were largely used instead, the IEA said, resulting in about 170mn tonnes of extra carbon dioxide emissions, or about 40 per cent of the total increase last year.

The fall in hydropower output particularly affected India and China, with emissions from burning fossil fuels for energy in China growing by 5.2 per cent.

The country had rapidly developed cleaner energy sources, accounting for about 60 per cent of the new solar and wind energy and electric vehicles developed globally during 2023, the IEA said.  

But that was not enough to cover a 6.1 per cent increase in energy demand in China as its economy grew on the back of sectors including construction.

By contrast, emissions from fossil fuel energy production in the US fell by 4.1 per cent despite its economy growing by 2.5 per cent, as lower gas prices helped it generate more electricity from gas rather than coal. 

At the same time, emissions from energy production in the EU fell by almost 9 per cent despite economic growth of 0.7 per cent, with the IEA attributing the trend to the growth of renewables such as wind power. 

Electricity production from coal and gas in the EU fell by 27 per cent and 15 per cent respectively, the IEA said, noting they were overtaken by wind power for the first time.

“A pandemic, an energy crisis and geopolitical instability all had the potential to derail efforts to build cleaner and more secure energy systems,” said Birol. 

“Instead, we’ve seen the opposite in many economies.” However, he called for greater efforts to help emerging economies invest more in clean energy.