Global Tax 50 2014: Patrick Odier

Patrick Odier is a new entry this year

Defending the interests of the Swiss banking industry has not been the easiest challenge in recent years. The role has fallen for the past five years to Patrick Odier, chairman of the Swiss Bankers' Association (SBA). He has battled to ensure that on topics such as the Common Reporting Standard, which will start operating as the global standard for the automatic exchange of information (AEoI) from 2017, and the facilitation by Swiss banks of non-residents, particularly US citizens, to keep undeclared assets in Switzerland, the position of his 317 institutional members and about 18,500 individual members is adequately explained and protected. The SBA argues that Switzerland will be particularly affected by AEoI because of the amount of global assets invested cross-border that are managed there. "For Switzerland, it is therefore important that the AEoI Standard is as practicable and fair as possible," the SBA says. Odier has been to the fore in pressing for a single global standard based on reciprocity and the legal and technical protection of data.

Odier, who became chairman of the board of Lombard Odier, the private bank, on January 1 this year, having been senior managing partner since July 2008, leads an organisation whose members have been under constant fire in recent years from other jurisdictions, the EU and tax justice campaigners. With the advent of the CRS, he can only hope things quieten down on the tax front.