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Axel Schwarzer, 62, the top winner at the Zurich Vontobel, lands hard. Although he is still far from retirement age, he has to leave ship today.
Contrary to the bank’s official statement that Schwarzer’s departure as head of asset management will take place “as scheduled on January 1, 2021,” something completely different happened behind the scenes.
A power struggle that Zeno Staub, CEO of Vontobel, decided in his favor.
Like 12 months ago, when Staub kicked out his other internal adversary, investment banking director Roger Studer.
At first glance, it seems surprising that Axel Schwarzer is also affected. Unlike Studer’s store, his division had become the family bank’s great guarantor of profits in recent years.
Asset Management will continue to be successful in the current year, according to Vontobel today in its statement on the top exit.
At the end of September, Asset Management had “posted a net inflow of new money of 9.3 billion Swiss francs,” according to the bank.
Client assets would have “more than tripled in the last ten years, from 43 billion Swiss francs to 142 billion Swiss francs.”
A different image emerges behind the polished facade. With Schwarzer’s close partner Roger Merz, several flagship funds have lost massive amounts of value.
The “Raiffeisen Futura Global Fund” is hopelessly behind the index.
The fund ends up in the custody account of the cooperative bank’s many retail clients, who prefer to purchase their investment products from Vontobel.
At Raiffeisen, despite the fund’s poor performance, they are satisfied.
“Raiffeisen Futura Global Stock is an actively managed and sustainable equity fund in which ecological, social and ethical criteria are taken into account when selecting stocks,” explained a spokesperson on request.
“The comparison with the MSCI World index is therefore only partially significant, as it does not take into account sustainability criteria.”
Other Vontobel funds, which operated under Schwarzer’s Buddy Merz for a long time, also failed to meet expectations. Among them are the “mtx Sustainable Global” funds, those of the “Smart Data” line and the Raiffeisen Europe funds.
All these products have been sold by Merz, they all show unsatisfactory, in some cases miserable performance.
That became the topic of Vontobel’s asset management this fall. Rather than take action against those responsible, Schwarzer gave the crisis fund a new name and his confidante Merz a new job.
He is now responsible for funds in emerging markets, where performance is significantly better.
Schwarzer’s personnel policy caused a problem with the personnel manager. This comes from Google and should make Vontobel a modern employer.
Caroline Knöri is the name of the woman; I wanted to introduce a new culture in asset management.
According to a source, Chief Schwarzer is said to have not allowed it, a dispute ensued between the two main people in the bank.
Eventually things escalated. “Knöri and Schwarzer each wrote their own report on cultural and management issues,” says the source.
The conclusion was that the management of “Sustainable Asset Management” was a problem.
Zeno Staub had been on the scene for a long time. Now he took action. Fainting, send me.
“In line with the strategy of operating as a client-centric investment house, and in line with the strategic importance of investment expertise to Vontobel’s success, the investment boutiques will be led by Matthew Benkendorf, Mark Holman, Simon Lue-Fong, Daniel Seiler, Hans Speich and Dan Scott straight to the CEO from the new year Zeno powder messages “.
