400 redundancies

New head of Julius Baer tightens austerity measures

The Swiss private bank Julius Baer is currently pursuing a strict austerity program.(Bild: Hans-Joachim Nitschmann)

The Swiss Julius Baer Group significantly increased its profits again last year after a slump. The new CEO Stefan Bollinger is now tightening the austerity measures. For example, the management team will be reduced from 15 to five, and a total of 400 jobs will be cut.

In addition to Bollinger, Manager Nic Dreckmann, Head of Risk Oliver Bartholet, Head of Finance Evie Kostakis and Chief Legal Counsel Christoph Hiestand are also on the Executive Board. Bollinger put his stamp on the crisis-ridden asset manager shortly after taking office. He wants to make gross savings of a further 110 million Swiss francs (equivalent to 117.11 million euros).

This is to be achieved through personnel costs and general costs. 400 jobs will be cut, which corresponds to around five percent of the workforce. Employees in Switzerland are likely to be particularly affected. However, the savings program will result in one-off costs in the current year, it was said.

Profit doubled, but growth still weak
In 2023, the private bank had reported a significant drop in profit by half. This was due to high write-downs to the insolvent Signa Group of Austrian investor René Benko, who is now in custody in Vienna.

In the previous year, the annual profit more than doubled again to 1.02 billion Swiss francs (equivalent to 1.08 billion euros). The company expects only modest growth this year. In the coming months, Bär will increasingly part with client advisors who do not meet the requirements, it said. It also intends to apply stricter risk standards.