For my appointment with Director Gabriele Corte, I arrive at the entrance of Bank of CeresioI have never had the opportunity to climb the stairs of the tower that, in the past, housed the postal telegraph antenna.
You're very fortunate to have offices in a historic monument in the center of Lugano. We too often forget the city's riches...
We've been here for five years now, so in a certain sense it's become a habit, but I still remember the surprise of the first time... a wonderful feeling. As you can see, the spaces truly reflect our "club" spirit, offering a private atmosphere when needed, yet open when needed to create synergies.
An elegance that seeks to create a welcoming, familiar atmosphere, like the bank's origins linked to the founding family: the Foglias.
Yes, there's no denying it, the influence of the shareholder family is quite evident. The Bank was founded in Switzerland in 1958 by brothers Alberto and Giambattista Foglia, but it was their father who began the financial business in Milan in the early twentieth century. The need arose out of family needs, and later other families joined in, needing to manage their assets. Today, ownership is in the hands of the third generation, with Antonio, Giacomo, and Federico Foglia, and the fourth is just beginning to join the family business. A journey that continues after more than a century of existence, like the building we are in.
Your Ceresio Investors Group manages and administers assets exceeding €9 billion, and you run a successful business, bucking the trend of the Lugano financial center, which is increasingly losing jobs…
There are more and more growing players on the market, but based solely on numbers, it would be difficult to say otherwise: over the last twenty years, the number of banks in Switzerland has practically halved, primarily due to mergers and acquisitions. However, Lugano continues to be a significant financial hub. I'm absolutely convinced that the local banking world has a future, but we must earn it, as is the case with any other economic sector. However, since I'm not a fortune teller, I can't tell you what tomorrow will hold; the important thing for an institution is to have a strategy that can evolve pragmatically and adapt to the normal cycles of the regional and international economic and regulatory landscape in which it operates.
You currently have around 100 employees in Lugano, 170 at the Group level. Your bank is among the most solid in the banking industry, being very well capitalized. Does this mean you focus primarily on private banking?
Exactly. Since its inception, the bank has focused primarily on private clients, consolidating an expertise built around the needs of the founding family—needs shared by many other families. Today, it's natural that investment needs and opportunities have evolved over time. This growth over the years has therefore led us to embrace, in addition to wealth management, the areas of entrepreneurial advisory and wealth consolidation. The consultancy It is aimed in particular at entrepreneurs for those facing critical financial phases extraordinary, such as mergers, acquisitions, transfers or quotations in bag, with about forty operations concluded between Italy and Switzerland. Our wealth consolidation practice adopts a holistic approach, offering a clear and structured view of the complexity of our clients' assets. This enables them to make complex decisions, often hampered by a lack of consistent and comprehensive information. Finally, wealth planning plays a crucial role in generational transitions, supporting families through the delicate stages of succession with tailored solutions designed to ensure continuity, protection, and enhancement of their assets over time.
So you don't do any lending?
"As you rightly pointed out, our bank is very well capitalized, and this also helps us provide security to our customers. A loan is undoubtedly a business opportunity, but it does introduce new risks to the balance sheet."
I imagine, given your presence in Lugano, that many of your customers are Ticino residents…
Families' financial needs are often similar, regardless of where they live, and those in Ticino are certainly no exception. In our small way, as a bank anchored in the local community, we try to both foster debate by organizing open meetings within our organization on topics beyond financial ones, and to support cultural development, as evidenced, for example, by our partnerships with the Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, the ProVenezia Foundation, and the City of Lugano in organizing the Estival Jazz.
We understand, from the way you speak, how attached you are to this Bank, not only professionally, but also emotionally…
Absolutely (silence). I arrived at Ceresio almost eight years ago, in 2018 to be precise, and I immediately felt welcomed. After twenty years of experience spent almost exclusively in Basel, Zurich, and Geneva, as a good Latino, I wanted to return to more familiar latitudes, also getting closer to my parents, who were slowly aging. But I didn't immediately arrive in Lugano, which I had left many years earlier after high school to go to university in Milan. The unexpected job opportunity that presented itself was the project to reopen BSI in Italy. In a short time, I found myself catapulted from Zurich to Milan, and I still remember the blunders I made when I started speaking Italian again every day (laughs). Unfortunately, that adventure didn't last long, as the misadventures at BSI had created a working environment that didn't allow for the necessary peace of mind. I still maintain wonderful personal relationships with some of my colleagues from back then. And let's just say that, thanks to the coincidences of life and a bit of mutual past knowledge, I happily landed at Banca del Ceresio."
May I ask you where you were born and why you are so attached to Lugano?
Ticino is also my home, even though I was born in Turin and fell in love with Milan. As often happens, it's the parents who move for work, but in my case they stayed. I came to Lugano for the first time at fourteen, where I finished high school and then enrolled at the University of St. Gallen. In reality, I never went because, after passing the entrance exam to Bocconi University in Milan, I cancelled my enrollment; I remember having to pay a sort of administrative penalty for canceling my enrollment... I immediately understood how Switzerland worked: precision and pragmatism. So, for me, Lugano represents adolescence, memories of family, and a particularly stimulating personal and professional present.
She has a very private life: no social media, no personal statements to journalists...
"Privacy is a valuable asset that must be protected for oneself and for others."
I understand (silence).
Your relationship with work: You're very involved. I imagine it's not easy to find free time for yourself and your family...
I have a different perspective: when you love what you do, you don't necessarily need to take a break, but you can still carve out moments to experience new things. I think it's nice to be passionate about life without ever losing sight of the fun, and this applies to everything, in relationships, friendships, and even work. Fun isn't just about hilarity; for me, fun is being able to learn something new, share an experience, help solve a problem, find a solution, and look forward with a clear vision. Fun only exists if there's passion, true passion; so, you'll understand that for me, work is a passion, precisely because I find in my daily life all the characteristics that make me feel good and grow as a person and as a professional. It's not just about my career; I'm talking about something more personal. If I happen to work a few extra hours, I don't feel like a burden, just as I don't look at the clock every minute when I'm with a friend. The secret formula, therefore, is to be passionate about what you do, with the pleasure of always having new challenges to face."
So you didn't choose to study economics by chance, or did you inherit this passion from someone close to you?
I didn't inherit it from anyone, at least not that I know of, but I have to say that, for some reason, I've always had a great passion for the world of banking. It's true that my father worked in the finance department at Fiat and in the latter part of his career he worked for the group's bank, but his heart beat for the industrial world. Getting back to me... I've always been interested in the role a bank plays within a company and how it monitors its development. This interest accompanied me throughout my studies, and when I got to university, it was a natural choice to study economics, spending several summers on banking programs for university students in Frankfurt and New York. I would have also loved to study architecture, but only out of personal curiosity; the truth is, I never had any hesitation whatsoever.
She seems like a very positive person, who doesn't let herself get discouraged, yet she must have had some difficult moments in her career...
I'd like to tell you about two extreme moments, not necessarily difficult ones, that had a profound impact on me. The first was the merger of SBS (Swiss Bank Corporation) and Union Bank of Switzerland, which gave rise to the current UBS AG. I'd been working in Basel for two years, and it was like a little dream come true. Then, at a certain point, I remember it as if it were yesterday... it was evening, and an unusual commotion broke out in the building where I was: bodyguards, several people, and—among them—the then CEO of Union Bank of Switzerland. The next day, they announced the merger. For someone like me who was young and loved working in a hyper-dynamic environment, it was an exhilarating moment because it opened up new horizons. Of course, there was the uncertainty of what would happen, but we were all very positive. I think this was one of the most interesting moments of my career, where I somehow internalized the fact that a major change, even if unexpected, can be a great opportunity if approached with curiosity. It reminds me of when we talked about the Lugano financial center: even unknowns can be enormous opportunities. The other moment, however, was more challenging and, I won't deny it, it affected me deeply. I was in Milan, at BSI, working for three years on a project with a very close-knit team, more than just colleagues. Each of us was putting in more than our best, then the blow came... BSI wouldn't have survived. In that moment, you feel frozen, you want to stop, but you have to keep thinking in a project-oriented way. And here you understand the risk associated with the unknown, the black swan, and you have to learn to manage it, even from an emotional standpoint.
Mergers and acquisitions can impact staff, as we know well even in Ticino. In these cases, how can managers' million-dollar bonuses be justified?
It's difficult to answer, partly because there's an emotional aspect that strikes the reader: how it's sometimes possible for a company to drastically reduce its costs while leaving the economic benefits of a few unchanged. I'll split my answer in two, starting with an ethical aspect, which allows for free will even in waiving or donating compensation deemed inappropriate; but I can't help but consider the aspect of legal certainty, which must mean fulfilling a contract regardless of subjective assessments or public opinion. I'm deliberately generalizing, also because it would be necessary to thoroughly understand each individual case to be able to properly assess it. There's, however, an underlying element to your question that leads me to reflect on the ultimate purpose of these operations, which are certainly appropriate in increasingly global markets, but are sometimes also ends in themselves. The relationship between the efficiency related to the scale of a company's operations and the cost associated with managing its increased complexity can, beyond a certain point, become negative. In other words, if growth at all costs is associated with risks that become uncontrollable, then the operations you mentioned lose all economic sense for most of the stakeholders involved, not necessarily for all. It's a topic I've always found so interesting that I made it the subject of my graduate thesis thirty years ago.
Tell me something, doesn't working daily with millions of dollars risk giving more and more value to money and to how much a person earns?
The risk may exist, but it shouldn't be a reason for living. On the other hand, we shouldn't be hypocritical either. The financial sector, in general, continues to have some of the highest average salaries in the market, worldwide. Therefore, we can somehow have the mistaken tendency to judge a person's worth based on their earning capacity. The error occurs when you begin to think that your earning capacity is the absolute measure of your intellectual abilities. This is the first distorting factor we must address. The second is linked to the work ethic: money is not an end in itself. It is respect for what underlies money that should guide us, in my opinion. When dealing with particularly wealthy individuals, they should be respected and valued first and foremost as people, and secondly, the work they or their families have done that has led them to such a privileged position. The idea of protecting what others have created is the guideline that should always be followed in our profession."
Since we've talked about challenges, we can't avoid talking about artificial intelligence. What do you think?
It's a fascinating topic, but it often generates more fear than a true understanding of what's happening. Let me explain a little better... it's certainly an epochal phenomenon, born from decades of research, not suddenly, yet it's suddenly being talked about a lot, often with negative connotations, as a threat to existing jobs. Think of the first English coachman seeing a train approaching, the lamplighter who one evening understood electricity, or the first email sent by a postman to a friend. Fortunately, human history is studded with thousands of small and large innovations that have structurally changed our society. I'm not saying it will be easy; change never has been. Also because the real challenge is social, tied to how to reabsorb into the workforce those who will suffer the substitution effect highlighted by my examples. I'm convinced that some of the extremism we're experiencing today in the Western world also has its roots in the inability to retrain those who were once put out of business by the robotization of assembly lines. Artificial intelligence seems to take away our expertise, but in reality it raises the bar by pushing human beings to raise the level of their knowledge, to evolve to work with it and to surpass themselves."
In this fast-paced world, we're making choices that aren't environmentally sustainable, yet without global investment, we risk losing everything...
I'm naturally positive, so I always see evolution in positive terms. However, evolution is also a sum of mistakes, and this is part of human history. To put it simply, I can imagine that whoever discovered fire for the first time burned their finger. I see the current state of society no differently, where we've made environmental mistakes, which the spirit of survival leads us to compensate for with innovations of the opposite nature. The real issue is whether, in the meantime, society is already ready to react, even if it faces sacrifices. If I have to express a concern, I fear that society is currently becoming so polarized that it's losing its rational reasoning and therefore its will to look forward, focusing instead on defending its past.
