[ad_1]
Fritz Gerber, one of the best-known former Swiss managers, died at the age of 91. For many years, Gerber ran the Zurich insurance company and the drug maker Roche. The rise of these two companies to global corporations is largely due to him.
Fritz Gerber as Roche boss in a 1991 photo.
Fritz Gerber, one of the most important Swiss personalities of managers of the last century, passed away last Sunday at the age of 91 years. Born in Bern, who grew up in modest circumstances at Huttwil in Emmental, he successfully headed the board and administration of the Zurich insurance company and the Roche pharmaceutical company for decades.
I’m already a director at 36
Gerber came to Zurich in 1958 at the age of 29 after having worked in the federal administration for two years after completing his law studies and obtaining the bar exam. As his biographer Karl Lüönd (“In Growth Rings”) put it, he had only worked there as a “legal off-roader” and was soon dispatched to India and Australia to rehabilitate distressed subsidiaries. In 1965, at the age of 36, he was named the youngest director of the insurance group at the time.
He rose to the highest rung of the professional ladder in Zurich in 1974 as Chairman of the Board of Directors. From 1977 to 1991 he worked as Executive Director and as Chairman of the Zurich Board of Directors. Only when Rolf Hüppi succeeded him as the new CEO of the Group, he limited himself to the Presidium of the Board of Directors, but he held this position for four more years until 1995.
Determination and strategic forecast
In the 1980s and 1990s, in Switzerland, unlike many large corporations, it was still common for managers to head the executive board and supervisory body. Gerber used his abundant power to optimize structures in Zurich, to impose budgetary and cost discipline, and to implement numerous acquisitions at home and abroad. It enabled the company to become one of the most successful industrial insurers in the world.
With similar determination and strategic foresight, he set to work with his second employer, the Roche pharmaceutical company. However, when he assumed the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO in 1978, this generated widespread criticism. Then-NZZ business editor Hansjörg Abt could not understand why there was “such power in the hands of an individual” and spoke of “a castling difficult to understand”.
But the tanner, who was blessed with almost infinite creativity, quickly disappointed his critics and also made Roche one of the most successful companies in his industry. The initial conditions were anything but easy for the manager. In the late 1970s Roche had a largely empty pipeline for new products. Furthermore, the environmental scandal in Seveso, in northern Italy, had hit the company hard. But Gerber managed to pull the company off its wobbly course and instill its new confidence.
Acquisitive strokes of genius
In hindsight, a stroke of genius turned out to be two major acquisitions of Roche in the 1990s. With his stake in the American company Genentech, Gerber initially laid the foundation for the group’s rise and to become the world’s largest biotech company. . With the acquisition of German competitor Boehringer Mannheim in 1997/98, the company became the market leader in diagnostics. Roche also acquired the rights to the so-called PCR technology in 1991. The company continues to benefit from this to this day: the company’s molecular tests based on this technology are used on a large scale for detection of Sars-CoV infections. 2.
At Roche, Gerber served as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Group CEO until 1997. After being replaced by Franz Humer as CEO, he was chairman until 2001 and a single member of the supervisory board until 2004. As with Zurich, he was appointed honorary president at Roche.
Notorious for personnel decisions
Gerber, who contributed his know-how and his extensive network of relationships with the Nestlé and Credit Suisse boards, among others, had many admirers, especially because during his 23-year term as Chairman of the Board of Directors, the value of Roche’s stock market far exceeded twenty times. But the manager, who had commanded a battalion among artillery troops in his younger years, was also known for difficult staff decisions. Those affected continued to do so for a long time.
With age, however, his dealings became increasingly smooth, people in his immediate environment say. You explain this with the close relationship Gerber had with his numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Gerber died of a stroke he had only suffered on Saturday.
