UBS Trader Jumps Ship For Luxury Ski-Maker (UBS)
January 29, 2010 8:34 AM
Bloomberg reports that Benedikt Germanier, a senior currency strategist with UBS (NYSE: UBS), decided to ditch UBS to become boss at a luxury ski-maker in Switzerland. He dropped his bonus and the perks of life as a banker on the way, joining Zai AG, which has a total of 10 employees that include craftsmen and carpenters.
“I feel much more down to earth, and I have my destiny in my hands,” says Germanier, 43, sitting in his office in Disentis, an Alpine village 44 miles from Davos where global executives are meeting this week. "To move ahead you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone, and that’s very important,” he says. “It’s not very comfortable” to give up the regular large pay-checks, says Germanier, a 1.87-meter (6-ft-1-inch) sports lover.
One of the reasons could be that brokerage firms and banks are scheduled to cut out on an estimated 329,000 jobs worldwide from the time the financial crisis began, according to Bloomberg data.
