Marcel Rohner, the incoming UBS CEO, is inheriting all kinds of problems, most of which are not of his making.

There are two points in the corporate life-cycle at which it is inauspicious to become CEO. The first is when the company has been on a high, because it is all too easy for the in-coming CEO to seem like a let-down compared with the outgoing star. The second is when the company is in dire straits; at that point, it is all too easy for the new CEO to be seen as somehow culpable in the firm’s problems, even if they are not of his making.

Marcel Rohner, latterly head of UBS’s private bank, recently appointed the new CEO of UBS Group, and now also CEO of the Investment Bank, is going to struggle with the latter predicament. Aside from the fact that it is inadvisable for the CEO of the Group to also be CEO of the investment bank, it is difficult enough to take the helm of any bank, but particularly so when it has just announced its first losses in nine years. That must be particularly galling when you were previously responsible for the bit of the bank that is doing very well.

Conversely, the previous incumbent at the investment bank, Huw Jenkins, fell foul of the former dilemma. He followed on the heels of John Costas, who had overseen an incredibly successful period for the bank and was regarded as something of a saint.

But it was double jeopardy for Mr Jenkins; having first had difficulty emerging from Mr Costas’ shadow, he has subsequently taken the fall for problems largely not of his making. A good chunk of UBS’s losses from subprime debt are believed to come from Mr Costas’s now defunct Dillon Read Capital Management. Equally, Mr Jenkins was not responsible for the decision to give Mr Costas $3.5bn and allow him to take 80 of the firm’s best traders and 40 support staff, thus fatally wounding the bank’s fixed income franchise, which up until Mr Jenkins quietly exited, he was unable to revive.

Mr Rohner, little known outside of the private banking world, faces a tough task. Most importantly, he cannot afford for UBS to have any more slip-ups: its high profile fixed income woes, the DRCM debacle and embarrassing $3.4bn write-down are enough for any bank’s reputation to cope with in one year. This is particularly true for a bank with such a conservative nature.

It is these kinds of dramas that UBS believed it had left far behind. Gone were the days, thought the Zurich HQ, of an almost $1bn loss with Long Term Capital Management’s collapse in 1998, and shortly before that the circa $1bn losses on Japanese bank convertible bonds.

Mr Rohner’s reputation for strong risk controls had better be merited.

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