By Oliver Hirt and Ariane Luthi
ZURICH, April 10 (Reuters) – Julius Baer is replacing its chief financial officer, a step that rounds off a shake-up in the private bank’s top management since it racked up heavy losses linked to risky lending.
The bank confirmed the search in a statement after Reuters reported the news.
CFO Evie Kostakis will be stepping down from her role to pursue another international leadership opportunity following an orderly transition, expected for the second half of the year, the bank said. Kostakis did not reply to a request for comment.
Kostakis took on the job in 2022, making her the highest-ranking survivor of a management team that has undergone extensive change over the past two years since the Swiss bank began revealing a string of painful losses and writedowns.
The CFO hunt has been in motion for several weeks, according to a source.
In Julius Baer’s 2022 and 2023 annual reports it said the CFO was in charge of overseeing credit risk – a period that ultimately proved a challenging one for the bank.
Problems began emerging in late 2023, when Julius Baer was caught up in the fall-out from the collapse of Austrian property tycoon Rene Benko’s Signa group, leading the bank to post loan losses of 586 million Swiss francs ($742 million) in early 2024.
Julius Baer is still under an enforcement assessment by Swiss financial market regulator FINMA over the Signa losses, which prohibits it from announcing new share buybacks.
As it announced that writedown, the bank ousted CEO Philipp Rickenbacher, replacing him with outsider Stefan Bollinger, a Goldman Sachs banker who took over in January 2025.
Longstanding chairman Romeo Lacher was next to go, his departure being announced a few weeks after Bollinger arrived. Ex-HSBC boss Noel Quinn was appointed as new chairman.
Then, in May 2025, Baer said chief risk officer Oliver Bartholet was retiring as it revealed a 130 million franc credit charge after reviewing its credit portfolio.
In November, the bank announced further losses of 149 million francs, writing down loan positions in its real estate book it said no longer fit with strategy.
($1 = 0.7895 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Oliver Hirt and Ariane Luthi. Editing by Dave Graham, Elisa Martinuzzi and Dhara Ranasinghe)
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