Geneva-based Societe Bancaire Privee has appointed Guillaume de La Borde Caumont as chief executive and has replaced two directors to improv...

Geneva-based Societe Bancaire Privee has appointed Guillaume de La Borde Caumont as chief executive and has replaced two directors to improve its corporate governance.

Mr de La Borde Caumont, an ex-Credit Agricole Indosuez banker, will replace Raphael Hardrick who will remain with the bank in the transitional period.

Pierre-Andre Beguin and Michel Broch will replace Riccardo Tattoni, the bank's largest shareholder and founder, who will resign at the end of this month, and Jacques Meyer de Stadelhofen, who will not stand for re-election in April.

Mr Beguin, a lawyer at Cabinet Budin & Associes has until recently been a director of Clariden Bank in Zurich.

Mr Broch is also a lawyer and former partner at Ernst & Young who served as chief executive of Geneva-based Banque Safdie January 2005, when he left to set up his own firm, Broch & Associes.

As well as being subject to an investigation by the Swiss stock exchange for an unspecified breach of disclosure rules, the bank has been charged with complicity in embezzlement in France for not reporting suspicious transactions by a former client. However, the bank denies any wrongdoing and the Swiss authorities are not pursuing the matter.

SBP had 57 employees and client assets of SFr1.5 billion ($1.23 billion) in December 2005 and is majority-owned by several Italian families.