Head of 700 UBS lawyers: This woman is cleaning up after scandalous bankers

Levi has now reached an out-of-court settlement with plaintiff Mozambique. There is talk of an additional loan reduction of $100 million in favor of the East African state. It is unknown whether this is true or not. Today, Monday, the government will announce more details about the agreement with the large Swiss bank at a press conference in the capital Maputo. As a result, CS’s $1.5 billion loan to the country has so far cost at least $800 million in fines and compensation, not including legal costs and reputational damage.

Sometimes 1.5 billion, sometimes 800 million. These are the damage amounts that lead attorney Levi is accustomed to. Even when he was head of the legal department of raw materials company Rio Tinto, triple-digit million amounts were not uncommon. He is also accustomed to highly complex legal cases, such as the case against Rio Tinto in Guinea. And Levi knows what he wants. He acts if there is a reasonable chance of legal agreement, because any hesitation will only result in additional costs. This is the understanding at UBS.

There’s money for it: UBS has set aside about $10 billion to resolve outstanding legal cases, according to Morgan Stanley estimates.

five million salary

Legal succession issues should be off the table: This attitude dates back to the former UBS leadership under Chairman Axel Weber and Sergio Ermotti. Ten years ago, the former governor of Germany’s central bank announced the slogan of quickly clearing bodies from the basement. Ermotti and then-legal chief Markus Diethelm implemented a quick-resolution strategy, unlike Credit Suisse, which fiddled for a time and fought all court cases under the management of President Urs Rohner and General Counsel Claudio Cerruti. With moderate results.

This is not Levi’s style. As a young lawyer with a law degree in Milan, he moved to New York without knowing any English, where he graduated from Fulham University with a degree in Law and Finance and joined a law firm in the US at a young age. When he was asked at one of the first meetings if he would host coffee, he knew: This would be the last time; That’s how Major, a headhunter specializing in lawyers, described it in Lindsey & Afrika’s company magazine. Her commitment to women in legal departments also stems from this experience. She is always committed to advancing women. It is committed to flexible working hours, parental leave and the compatibility of family and work. She is also a mother of four children.

After returning from New York, Levi worked as a general councilor, first at Sandoz and Novartis in Basel, and then at Rio Tinto. Today, with his top job on the board at UBS, Levi is likely to be the highest-paid legal director of a Swiss company. His salary was easily 5 million, and when he started working in 2021, he received 7 million in compensation for the accrued shares. He is the head of the legal department, which has seven hundred lawyers.

Levi still has a long to-do list. The Madoff case is still being heard in courts in Luxembourg, and cross-border litigation with France is also ongoing. And there are a few more cases from the former Credit Suisse; most notably the epic dispute over Lex Greensill, which will occupy courts in London, Sydney and New York for years to come. And finally, there is the dispute with the former bondholders of Credit Suisse, which provides legal material to armies of lawyers.