Sergio Ermotti, the chief executive parachuted in to UBS to oversee the rescue of Credit Suisse, talks to FT editor Roula Khalaf ...
What Sergio Ermotti said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Sergio Ermotti, UBS CEO, discussed his return to lead the Credit Suisse integration, highlighting the successful migration of 110 petabytes of data and cultural integration, with employee preference for Credit Suisse rising from 55% in 2022 to 81% by end-2025. He attributed Credit Suisse's collapse to an unsustainable business model and regulatory concessions. On headcount, he confirmed reductions from 157,000 to 117,000, aiming to complete redundancies by early next year. Ermotti opposed Swiss capital reforms as disproportionate and not internationally aligned, rejecting a 50% higher requirement than peers. He ruled out moving UBS headquarters, citing Switzerland's 20th largest economy and UBS's 20th largest bank status. He criticized European overregulation and complacency in markets, discussed Gulf recovery post-conflict, and downplayed private credit risks, noting UBS's 0.5% balance sheet exposure.
Key takeaways
UBS reduced headcount from 157,000 to 117,000, with redundancies expected to finish by early next year.
Ermotti opposes Swiss capital requirements that are 50% higher than peers, calling them disproportionate and not internationally aligned.
UBS migrated 110 petabytes of data during Credit Suisse integration, equivalent to watching a movie for 275 years.
Credit Suisse employee preference as employer of choice rose from 55% in 2022 to 81% by end-2025, above the 75% industry norm.
UBS has only 0.5% of its balance sheet in private credit, with 50% loan-to-value and 60% investment grade.
11:46So what is wrong to have the 20th largest bank in the world being aligned with the 20th largest economy in the world?
12:20Do you see the standoff on regulation as part of a broader problem in Europe?
14:06Do you feel that there is a lot of complacency in markets even among large corporates about the war in Iran and this assumption that everything's going to be fine?
Sergio Ermotti is in his second stint as CEO of UBS, Switzerland's largest bank and Europe's largest wealth manager. In 2023, he was brought back just weeks after UBS agreed to rescue Credit Suisse from the brink of collapse. Since then, he's been integrating Credit Suisse and more recently he has found himself in a standoff with the Swiss authorities.
Well, actually, you know, when I was 15, I wanted to be a football player and my plan B was the fact that eventually if I wouldn't be a professional football player to be a sport teacher and
And you haven't done too badly for yourself. You're a kind of stabilizer in chief. Do you think of yourself as someone who sort of brought in to stabilize institutions after crisis?
It's interesting because when I go back into my career until I was around 40, my mandate was always to grow businesses, create new businesses. After a couple of years the financial crisis comes, it was all about restructuring and then at UBS eventually
When we started the journey, we had a clear view on what should be done. We have been migrating 110 petabytes of data, so it's like watching a movie for 275 years in a row and still serving clients. Because clients had a little bit of sympathy for our challenge for a couple of weeks, but then they want to be served. I was surprised that we did it so
The speed and the quality of how our people focused on doing both at the same time. But the biggest positive surprise in my point of view was that at the end of the day, it's not numbers, it's not the KPIs or financials, it's the cultural integration. Back in 2022, at the end of 2022, Credit Suisse colleagues back then would only reference Credit Suisse as an employer of choice by a factor of 55%. At the end of 2024, it was already 70%. At the end of 2025, it was 81%. Industry norm is 75%. So the fact that we managed to do this integration successfully is also the fact that the culture did come together much quicker than anybody has.
Clearly a business model that was not sustainable. When a bank starts to lose money fairly regularly and has reputational issues, it becomes a very risky and dangerous cocktail. So both management board and shareholders are the ones who bear the vast majority of the responsibilities because they should have acted more decisively. Regulatory concessions were given to Credit Suisse for too long and actually in a way that created a further problem. And lastly, I would say that with hindsight, clients and regulators and stakeholders in general didn't watch the market. The market was telling the story already a few years before it happened. So the lessons learned is going to
We are not commenting on numbers, but of course we started the journey with a combined headcount of 157,000. We are right now at 117,000. Of course, we know that there is still a little bit of work. The most painful part of this integration is clearly when you have to go through these redundancies, but I hope this is going to be done by the beginning of next year.
18 more exchanges in this transcript
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Ermotti, S. (2026, May 8). UBS's Sergio Ermotti on Swiss plans for stringent capital requirements | FT Interviews [Interview transcript]. Financial Times. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1008965/
MLA
Sergio Ermotti. "UBS's Sergio Ermotti on Swiss plans for stringent capital requirements | FT Interviews." Financial Times, 8 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1008965/.
BibTeX
@misc{ermotti2026_1008965,
author = {Sergio Ermotti},
title = {UBS's Sergio Ermotti on Swiss plans for stringent capital requirements | FT Interviews},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Financial Times. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1008965/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
