Swiss Bank: Heinz Huber leaves the management of Raiffeisen

Raiffeisen will have to look for a new boss. Heinz Huber, general director of the St. Gallen establishment, will leave his position at the end of the year, before assuming the presidency of the Graubünden Cantonal Bank (GKB) from July 2025. Christian Poerschke, current head of the Finance department & Services and vice-president of management, will take over as interim head of the number two Swiss bank.

Heinz Huber has been CEO of Raiffeisen since January 2019 and has greatly contributed to the development of the establishment, the latter wrote in a press release on Wednesday. Incidentally, the St. Gallen bank recalls the entry into office of Mr. Huber at a “very delicate” period, the latter then succeeding Patrik Gisel, who had left his post in the context of the Vincenz affair, named of his predecessor Pierin Vincenz.

Former boss of the Thurgau Cantonal Bank, Mr. Huber put Raiffeisen back on the path to growth after the sharp drop in its profit suffered in 2018 due to exceptional charges linked to the Vincenz era. These extraordinary costs were notably the result of the review of the stakes accumulated under the former general manager.

While the cooperative banking group suffered a drop in its net profit of 41% over the year to 540.8 million francs for the 2018 financial year, Raiffeisen generated a net profit of 1.39 billion last year, for revenues of 4.1 billion. The group brings together some 220 Raiffeisen banks and employs more than 11,000 people.

Premature departure for Peter Fanconi

Last February, the Supreme Court of the canton of Zurich annulled the first instance judgment against Pierin Vincenz due to “serious procedural defects”. The public prosecutor will have to file a new indictment with the first instance. The Zurich District Court sentenced the former CEO of Raiffeisen and four of his associates in April 2022 to sentences of up to several years in prison.

Mr. Vincenz was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for unfair management by trade, breach of trust, forgery of securities and other offenses. His main associate was punished with four years in prison. As the defendants did not accept this judgment, an appeal trial was scheduled for next July before the Zurich Supreme Court. This will not be the case, the latter having admitted the defense’s complaints about several procedural flaws.

Appointed and elected by the government of the canton of Graubünden, Mr. Huber will succeed Peter Fanconi, who has given up seeking a new mandate as chairman of the board of directors of the Cantonal Bank of Graubünden. To ensure a smooth transition, he will continue in his role until the end of June 2025.

Mr. Fanconi was criticized for his relations with the Austrian investor René Benko, whose real estate group Signa, then in the process of collapsing, had obtained a loan of more than 60 million francs from the GKB. Mandated by the establishment, the audit firm Ernst & Young, which also certifies the bank’s accounts, concluded that the granting of this loan was in order, considering in particular that the role of the president was limited to the bringing the parties into contact.

However, the Ernst & Young report only partially convinced the Graubünden state council. The latter had perceived a need to act at the level of the establishment’s governing bodies, inviting his GKB managers to discuss in particular their obligations in terms of transparency.

To succeed Mr. Franconi, the government’s choice fell on Heinz Huber because of his long and solid experience in the financial sector, indicates the GKB in a separate press release. After a banking apprenticeship at UBS, where Heinz Huber learned the banking profession, he obtained a master’s degree in business management from the University of Rochester and the University of Bern. He also followed various continuing education courses at Harvard Business School and the University of St. Gallen. Heinz Huber, 60, is particularly linked to Graubünden through his second home.

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