In 2025, the CEOs of UBS, EFG International and Julius Baer received variable remuneration of up to 4.8 times their base salary. This figure far exceeds the caps recommended by the Ethos Foundation. This situation is reigniting concerns about risk management in the Swiss banking sector.
14.9 million Swiss francs for the CEO of UBS, 9.6 million for the CEO of EFG International and as much as 23.1 million for the new CEO of Julius Baer, taking into account the 14.8 million he received to compensate for the remuneration ‘lost’ upon leaving his previous employer (Goldman Sachs). Once again in 2025, the remuneration of executives at the largest listed banks in Switzerland, excluding cantonal banks, reached record levels. These levels far exceed the limits set by the Ethos Foundation’s voting guidelines.
Thus, the CEO of EFG International received variable remuneration equivalent to 3.5 times his base salary of 2 million Swiss francs. Considering the variable remuneration realised in 2025 – that is, the amount taking into account the value of shares distributed three years earlier under the long-term incentive plan and which reached the end of their performance period last year –his total variable remuneration amounts to CHF 9 million, or 4.5 times his base salary. The CEO of UBS, who took the helm of the bank in 2023 and whose first long-term variable remuneration plan has therefore not been completed yet, received variable remuneration equivalent to 4.8 times his base salary of 2.5 million Swiss francs in 2025. As for the new CEO of Julius Baer, his variable remuneration (excluding the ‘replacement payment’) amounts to 4.1 times his annualised base salary of 1.5 million Swiss francs.
As a reminder, Ethos’s guidelines set a maximum limit of three times the base salary for CEOs and twice the base salary for other members of the executive management. “These caps are not chosen at random,” emphasises Vincent Kaufmann, CEO of the Ethos Foundation. “They aim to prevent management from taking excessive or even reckless risks, as was the case during the 2008 financial crisis or the recent collapse of Credit Suisse.”
A maximum of seven times the base salary for UBS
In its detailed analysis issued to its clients, Ethos compared the remuneration of the UBS CEO with that of 15 CEOs of major European financial firms. The result was that his base salary is 150% higher than the median, and his total remuneration is 147% higher than the median. Furthermore, the current political debate in Switzerland regarding UBS’s capital adequacy has likely influenced the setting of his remuneration for 2025, as was already the case in 2024. As a reminder, the remuneration report specifies a cap of seven times the base salary for executives’ variable remuneration.
As for Julius Baer, the main concern this year relates to the size of the replacement payment received by the new CEO. Of the 14.8 million Swiss francs received in this regard, only 4.6 million are subject to performance targets linked to the share price. As for the remaining 10.2 million, the precise amount deferred and subject to a condition of continued employment and a clawback clause is not disclosed, which Ethos considers problematic given the very high amount.
Ethos also criticises the increase in the cap on variable remuneration for members of Julius Baer’s executive management from four to six times the base salary. In the current context, particularly following the recent losses linked to the Signa exposure which highlighted shortcomings in risk management, increasing the upside potential of variable remuneration appears misaligned with the need to strengthen a prudent risk culture.
Ethos therefore recommends that shareholders of the three banks vote against all agenda items relating to remuneration, except for the fixed remuneration of Julius Baer’s executive management members. This position will be defended at the general meetings of Julius Baer (9 April) and UBS (15 April), while the general meeting of EFG International has taken place on 20 March.
A far cry from US bankers’ remuneration
The three Swiss executives are thus among the highest-paid bankers in continental Europe. Since 2014, bank bonuses within the European Union have been capped at twice the base salary, a measure introduced after the financial crisis to reduce excessive risk-taking. Although this cap remains in force, it did not prevent UniCredit from granting a remuneration of 17.7 million euros to its CEO Andrea Orcel, who was once tipped to take over at UBS, with a variable component reaching its maximum of twice the base salary.
Nevertheless, there remains a significant gap compared with the United States, where the CEOs of the four largest banks all earned over 40 million US dollars in 2025. The CEO of JP Morgan received 43 million US dollars (up 10% on 2024), the CEO of Citi 42 million (up 22%), the CEO of Morgan Stanley 45 million (up 32%) and the CEO of Goldman Sachs 47 million (up 21%).
