Thomas Schneider, a veteran chief auditor with deep regulatory know-how, will be proposed at the next Annual General Meeting of GAM Holding AG on 30 April for election as a new member of the board.

David Jacob, the chairman of the Zurich-listed investment house, said in GAM's recently released full-year 2019 results and strategy document: “His deep audit knowledge and appreciation of both Swiss and global regulatory environments is the perfect complement to the extensive asset management experience we currently have on our board.”

The appointment is itself subject to regulatory approval, as is the drastic restructuring of the board which is timed for April Fool's Day.

The suspension and subsequent dismissal of a senior manager more than a year ago triggered off a major outflow of business at the beleaguered asset management firm. In the summer of 2018 Tim Haywood, an investment director in the London office, was reported to the Financial Conduct Authority (some say by a member of the compliance staff) for failure to "conduct or evidence sufficient due diligence" and failure to make accessible internal records of documents in certain instances, which led to his swift departure and sent GAM's fortunes into a tailspin. Shortly afterwards Natalie Baylis, who had joined GAM and its group management board as Group Head of Compliance in June 2018, left unexpectedly after only three months in the job. Schneider's regulatory expertise is likely to be of benefit to the group in the bleak years ahead.

The page of full-year results contains other revelations that display the extent of the damage: "Group Management Board (GMB) will receive no bonus for 2019 and CEO Pete Sanderson has requested to forego a contractual fixed cash award due this year. Board of Directors (BoD) will propose no dividend for the financial year 2019."

Swissman Schneider, 55, is presently the chairman of the board at Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank. He spent 27 years at Ernst & Young and was the chief auditor for the international wealth management division at Credit Suisse.

GAM had an underlying profit before taxes of SFr10.5 million in 2019, down from SFr126.7 million in 2018. Group CEO Peter Sanderson says that he has a strategy to make GAM "fit for the future."