The Switzerland-listed group, which has been through a difficult period, has announced 2024 financial figures and named the new CEO who will take the helm from the start of March.

Zurich-listed Leonteq, a structured products and insurance products firm, has appointed a new chief executive, Christian Spieler, taking the role from 1 March. He will succeed Lukas Ruflin, one of its founders. In July last year, the firm said Ruflin would step down once a successor was named.

Spieler will take on the role as Leonteq pushes to improve its profitability. Late last December, Fitch, the ratings agency, cut long-term default ratings on the business to “negative” from “stable,” citing a decline in the firm’s profitability. Fitch’s expectations that achieving a sustainable operating return on equity approaching 10 per cent over Leonteq’s outlook horizon would be “increasingly challenging.”

Today, Leonteq said its net trading result and net profit for 2024 fell from a year ago. 

The business said net fee income rose in 2024 by 1 per cent year-on-year to SFr214.4 million ($237.4 million); its net trading result contracted to SFr21.5 million on the back of continued low market volatility, versus SFr36.6 million a year before. Group net profit fell to SFr5.8 million from SFr20.6 million. 

Leonteq’s shareholder equity rose to SFr803.8 million in 2024 from SFr780.1 million. The board said it will propose a dividend of SFr0.25 per share, down from SFr1.00) at the 2025 annual meeting. 

The firm said its franchise is “strong”: a record number of 46,467 products were issued (rising 22 per cent from a year before); a record number of 275,820 client transactions processed on the platform (up 40 per cent vs 2023); and turnover totalled SFr27.6 billion (up 30 per cent vs 2023).

Effective 1 January 2025, Leonteq is subject to enhanced capital and large exposure requirements, the firm said. This regulatory regime takes into account Leonteq’s growth in size and the evolution of its business model; it will be fully phased in by mid-2026, it added.

Last December, FINMA, Switzerland’s financial regulator, ordered Leonteq to disgorge SFr9 million of profits after shortcomings in the way the firm distributed its products came to light .

New CEO
Spieler has a career spanning more than 25 years in large global financial institutions in Frankfurt and London. He started his career working in various derivatives roles at JP Morgan, where he took up leadership positions with responsibility for the Germany, Austria and Switzerland region. In 2005, he moved to Lehman Brothers as head of capital markets for Germany and Austria. From 2008 to 2021, he served at Citigroup Global Markets as a member of the executive board. During his tenure at Citigroup, he was heading the equities, fixed income, FX and commodities efforts for German and Austrian clients and was responsible for warrants trading and sales Europe.

Since 2022, Spieler has been an external advisor at Bain & Company with a focus on financial institutions and capital markets business-related projects and a senior advisor at 2RSq Services, London which offers a cloud-based software-as-a-service platform for investment management. 

A German national, Spieler studied economics and mathematics at the University of Frankfurt, UCLA, Stanford University and UC Berkley and obtained a master’s degree in economics from the University of Bonn.