The new CEO takes up his post at the start of September.

Julius Baer has named a new chief executive, Philipp Rickenbacher, who takes up the post from 1 September. He succeeds Bernhard Hodler, who has been in the post since 2017 after taking up the role in the wake of the departure of Boris Collardi that year.

Rickenbacher is head of intermediaries and global at the Zurich-listed bank and before that was head of advisory solutions for two years. He joined Julius Baer in 2004 from McKinsey & Company.

As part of the changes, Hodler will retire from his role and from Julius Baer’s executive board on 31 August 2019. He has been with the company for 21 years and was CEO from 2017. Hodler will assist the new CEO and the board to ensure a smooth transition into 2020, before pursuing other projects, the bank said in a statement today.

Shares in the bank were down about 2.8 per cent around 11 am Swiss time, while the Swiss Market Index in Zurich was down slightly on the day.

For this appointment, Julius Baer said it had scrutinised internal and external candidates. "We are delighted that, with Philipp Rickenbacher, we have been able to appoint an internal candidate with a compelling leadership and industry track record, deeply familiar with Julius Baer’s culture and business, but prepared to actively address the challenges of the future,” the bank’s chairman, Romeo Lacher, said. He added: “Bernhard Hodler was exactly the right man at the right time. I would like to thank him for initiating this transformation, driving the bank’s strategic agenda with a sharper focus on efficiency and risk management, while stabilising its franchise across a challenging period.”

Julius Baer’s leadership has been under the spotlight since markets were taken aback in late 2017 by Collardi’s departure as CEO, moving to become a partner at Swiss private bank Pictet. A firm that prides itself as a “pure-play” private bank, Julius Baer has made much of its push into Asia, a market that it has sometimes dubbed its second home market. The past decade saw it acquire the non-US wealth business of Merrill Lynch, and develop a regional presence in the UK, among other moves.

Among recent high-profile appointments, in late May Julius Baer announced that the head of its markets division, Peter Gerlach, was switching to its wealth management arm on 1 July. As part of the change, Luigi Vignola, who was global head for structured products, succeeded Gerlach.

Julius Baer issues first-half 2019 financial results on 22 July.

At the start of June Julius Baer disclosed that Singapore's GIC sovereign wealth fund had amassed a significant share stake in the Swiss bank.