Factbox-Five Facts About Returning UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti

LONDON (Reuters) – Sergio Ermotti has been rehired as the CEO of Swiss banking giant UBS to steer its massive takeover of rival Credit Suisse.

Here are five facts about the 62-year-old banker.

* Swiss national Ermotti began his career as an apprentice at Corner Bank, before getting his first big break in 1987 with a role at Merril Lynch, where he opened their Swiss capital markets operation from scratch.

* Described as suave, charismatic and impeccably dressed, Ermotti, who hails from Switzerland’s Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, had thought about becoming a skier or a footballer but decided to stay in banking.

* He joined UBS in 2011 after being passed over for the top job at Italian lender UniCredit. Within six months of joining he was appointed interim CEO in the wake of a $2.3 billion trading scandal, before he was picked to run UBS on a permanent basis until 2020.

* Ermotti, with long experience in investment banking and wealth management, is credited with executing UBS’s turnaround and scaling down its investment banking operations after a series of scandals and losses nearly caused the bank’s implosion.

* A self-described “lazy reader”, he has said he prefers skiing down the Swiss slopes of St. Moritz and that he can watch the same film over and over again, citing “The Sting” as his favourite.

(Reporting by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes; Editing by Toby Chopra)