Peter Wuffli
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Dr Peter A. Wuffli (born 26 October 1957 in Zurich) was appointed President of the Group Executive Board of UBS AG in December 2001 and Group Chief Executive Officer in September 2003. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of UBS Asset Management and, before that, UBS Group Chief Financial Officer.
From 1994 to 1998, he was the Chief Financial Officer at SBC and a member of SBC's Group Executive Board in Basel. There he met Marcel Ospel, and together they have risen to top positions with the new UBS after the 1998 "merger", i.e. when SBC took over the former UBS.
In 1984, he joined McKinsey & Co as management consultant and in 1990 became a partner of McKinsey Switzerland's senior management. He started his professional life, while studying at HSG, writing about economics for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
Today, he is one of the top wage-earners in Switzerland and Europe (€ 18.5 million in 2005 [1]).
He is a Swiss citizen and a graduate of the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland (1981, doctorate 1984). Married with Susanna, they have three children. His hobbies are opera and Latin American art, he is said to enjoy taking "dips into ordinary life, like shopping".
His father Heinz R. Wuffli was general director of Credit Suisse from 1967 to 1977, when he had to resign taking part of the responsibility for the Chiasso affair.
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[edit] Sharia-banking
In 2002 Wuffli was behind UBS founding of a special subsidiary called Noriba in Bahrain, offering Sharia-compliant financial products to the Islamic world – "no riba" means "no interest" in Arabic, Islamic banking operates by sharing profit (or loss) between the bank and its clients. Noriba has been integrated into UBS by the end of 2006, and all of its products are directly sold under the UBS brand.
[edit] Other engagements
Im December 2006 Wuffli and his wife Susanna founded the Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization.
He is also president of the Friends of the FDP (Freunde der FDP) association [2], founded 2004 to support the Swiss FDP political party, which he has been a member of since his youth.
He is also a Board member of the Zurich Opera House, member of the Executive Committee of the Institute of International Finance Inc., Washington DC, member of the Executive Committee and Vice Chairman of the Board of IMD International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne and Vice Chairman of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich.
[edit] Quotes
He had recently announced that [top] management salaries [at UBS] were rising, on average, by 21 percent.
- "UBS recognizes that very serious mistakes were made."
–after UBS was fined, on May 10, 2004, $100 million by the U.S. Federal Reserve for illegally transferring dollars from a Fed deposit – an account set up by the Fed in a commercial bank – at UBS to Cuba and other countries under a U.S. trade embargo [3]
- "I understand that many ask critical questions about whether high profits and job cuts are justifiable. I do not get a bad conscience about that, I am pleased about UBS's success."
–in an interview with the weekly SonntagsZeitung, 2004
- "A banker is, naturally, not liked." ("Ein Banker ist von Natur aus nicht beliebt.")
–in an interview with the weekly Weltwoche 16/03
- "I am proud of what I do and I am proud if we have successes."
–in an interview with Swissinfo, November 7, 2002
- "We do have an erosion of confidence and I think if you go back in history every bubble has basically led to abuses, to fraud, to unethical behaviour and we’re seeing the same."
–in an interview with Swissinfo, November 7, 2002
- "The question is: whom do you compare a manager with? Traditionally a manager is compared with a fixed wage employee. ... We should ... compare them much more with entrepreneurs than with fixed-wage salaries."
–in an interview with Swissinfo, November 7, 2002
- "A company is only as ethical as its people."
