Biography|Ralph Hamers — Bahnhofstrasse 45, the Day He Took the Chair at UBS

On 19 February 2020 the UBS board named him group chief executive, effective 1 November.

The announcement, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the next day, is the primary record.

Sergio Ermotti would stay until 31 October. Hamers would join the group executive board on 1 September and take the chair two months later.

He had spent 29 years at ING. He left the Dutch bank in June 2020.

1 November 2020 was a Sunday. The title changed on a calendar, not on a stage.

The registered office of UBS Group AG is Bahnhofstrasse 45, in the block between Paradeplatz and the lake end of Zurich's banking street.

That address is the pin. It is a public bank building, not a private floor.

He arrived as the outsider hired to push a wealth manager further into digital service. Twenty-eight months later the Swiss authorities midwifed UBS's emergency purchase of Credit Suisse.

On 29 March 2023 the board brought Ermotti back. Hamers stood down as group CEO at the annual general meeting in Basel on 5 April 2023 and stayed briefly as an adviser.

The Zurich chair lasted from 1 November 2020 to 5 April 2023.

After UBS he joined the advisory side of the American platform Arta Finance and, in 2025, the board of Palo Alto Networks.

Bahnhofstrasse 45 is still the brass-plate address. The person who holds the title now is not the person this pin is about.

Photo: UBS headquarters, Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich, Ank Kumar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.