The new CEO takes over from a predecessor who left the role in January this year. There have been a number of senior changes at the Liechtenstein-based bank.

Liechtensteinische Landesbank has appointed Dr Gabriel Brenna as the new group chief executive and chairman of the LLB Group, effective 1 March, subject to regulatory clearance. He is taking over from Roland Matt, who left the company at the end of January.

Brenna has been head of the private banking division and a member of the group executive management and management board since 2012. He is continuing to lead the private banking business until LLB chooses a successor, the group said in a statement today.

Before LLB, Brenna was at consulting firm McKinsey & Company in Zurich and London for eight years, reaching the position of partner and head of the Swiss private banking and risk management practice. In this capacity, he advised private banks, cantonal banks, and major international banks in Switzerland and Europe on a wide range of strategic and operational questions. 

"In recent years, he has demonstrated his strategic strengths and his client orientation and will carry our broadly diversified business model into the future with great motivation and conviction on the basis of our values, together with a strong team,” Gabriela Nagel-Jungo, vice chairwoman of the board of directors, said of Brenna. 

Brenna studied at the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and at Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University in the United States, obtaining his doctorate from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2004. He is a Swiss and Italian citizen, and has been a resident of Liechtenstein since 2012. 

LLB thanked Urs Müller, who served as interim CEO of the LLB Group. He will continue to serve as deputy group CEO and focus again on managing the private and corporate clients division and the chairmanship of the board of directors of Bank Linth.

In November last year, the group announced that Georg Wohlwend had resigned as its chairman, due to criminal proceedings against him that were unrelated to his work at LLB Group. Wohlwend has firmly denied the allegations.