UBS and ETH: New partnership and 40 million donation

Switzerland is one of the most innovative countries in the world, but has to do more to stay on top: This conviction is behind a comprehensive partnership that the major bank UBS and ETH Zurich agreed at the beginning of the week and made public this Thursday.

UBS is donating up to CHF 40 million, which will flow into two initiatives – for more entrepreneurship and for young talent in mathematics and technology – and into a new building at the ETH Hönggerberg. The parties disclose the cooperation agreement.

Thanks to its innovative strength, Switzerland was able to overcome the pandemic or the euro crisis in 2012, says Sabine Keller-Busse, head of UBS Switzerland, to the NZZ. “But we generally need more people who are able to keep innovation high in Switzerland.” Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich, would also like to use the initiatives to strengthen Switzerland as a location for knowledge and business. “The competition never sleeps.”

There are not enough female computer scientists

The initiative for more STEM skills (math, computer science, natural sciences, technology) will start in primary and secondary school. The ETH will contribute its existing programs, for example the “Cybathlon@School”: Pupils develop exoskeletons for people with paraplegia, ETH students lead these workshops.

In the first step, the “STEM@School” platform is to be created on this basis. With its funding and its network – including volunteers who are already involved in school projects – UBS ensures that these programs reach significantly more schools.

You have to broaden the base of Mint specialists, says Keller-Busse. For this, the fear of contact with mathematics and technology would have to be broken down at school and the passion for these subjects kindled. Keller-Busse compares the task with the “UBS Kids Cup”, the athletics support program that the bank has been rolling out with the sports associations since 2011: the more children the program reaches, the greater the chance that a super talent will be discovered.

The six medals at the European Championships last week are also due to the fact that more children found their way into athletics. Mesot formulates the goal of the new initiative as follows: “We are looking for the Kambundjis of tomorrow for the mint sector.”

Special attention is to be paid to groups that have so far been underrepresented in the natural and technical sciences. On the one hand, there are talents from educationally disadvantaged families who previously had little access to universities. On the other hand, the untapped potential is particularly high among girls. For years now, young men have been in the majority in courses such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and IT. In Switzerland, this disparity is greater than in many other countries.

“We used to appoint too few women to professorships,” says Mesot. But in the past three years, ETH has been able to increase the proportion of women in appointments to over 40 percent. “That creates important role models for the students.” Nevertheless, more and better groundwork is needed. He refers to experiences that the Paul Scherrer Institute, for example, has had with student laboratories: girls were just as creative and skilful with technology as boys; but only if they worked in gender-separated groups.

More entrepreneurs

The second initiative starts with the students and aims to promote entrepreneurial thinking and acting. In workshops, UBS and ETH want to impart skills that are important for young entrepreneurs, such as marketing, accounting and broader financial knowledge.

In another format, the students should be able to regularly exchange ideas with experienced entrepreneurs in order to learn from them. In addition, ETH spin-offs should be able to get to know potential financiers on a dedicated investor day and exchange ideas on major strategic challenges with managers and specialists from third-party companies on an innovation day.

UBS and ETH also hope that this initiative will have a broad impact: “We have to bring the innovation from ETH to the corporate world. Only that creates jobs in Switzerland,” says Keller-Busse. SMEs, which the ETH has not yet reached so well, should also benefit from this transfer of knowledge. Mesot cites cybersecurity as an example of where this transfer is still sluggish: Efficient methods have been developed at ETH to effectively protect small companies from hacker attacks. However, these solutions are still not well known to SMEs, even though they too are threatened by cyber attacks.

But do Zurich ETH students actually need more entrepreneurship? The track record of the university is already quite good. Every year, ETH graduates set up around 25 start-ups. As studies by the University of St. Gallen show, these startups have a very high chance of survival; and they are also getting more and more capital. But there is always a better way: Israel or the clusters around the British top universities are ahead of Switzerland in many respects when it comes to start-up funding.

According to its own statements, UBS has a customer relationship with every second company in Switzerland. The bank also sees itself more and more as a technological platform that can connect lenders and borrowers directly with each other (i.e. not just via their own balance sheets). ETH start-ups looking for financing should also have better access to this network in the future.

More funding would be welcome. In 2022, the ETH spin-offs brought in more than CHF 600 million from venture capitalists. In particular, for very large rounds of financing, in the range of around CHF 100 million, the Swiss networks are usually not sufficient. “We still have to work with international partners too often for such large rounds,” says Mesot.

In addition, numerous start-ups are still moving away from Switzerland when a large round of financing is pending. “Numerous countries are trying to poach our startups,” says Mesot, some of which have opened their own offices in Zurich for this purpose.

As already mentioned, these two initiatives will be complemented by a new building on the Hönggerberg: it is intended to bring together all the existing initiatives for startups and entrepreneurship scattered across the campus in one place. There will also be workshops here, equipped with 3D printers, for example, which are available to all students.

Several ETH student associations are also set to find a new home in the Center for Students & Entrepreneurs. If the project goes ahead as planned, construction will start in 2024 and open in 2027. The university is looking for other donors for the building; According to Mesot, concrete talks are already underway.

Transparency from the start

What does UBS get out of this? Keller-Busse refers to the big picture. As a large company, UBS has a social responsibility. In addition, one also benefits directly when the domestic market flourishes. “If Switzerland is successful as a country, that will have an impact on our foreign customers,” says Keller-Busse.

When UBS donated CHF 100 million to the University of Zurich in 2012 to set up the UBS Center for Economics in Society, criticism arose that it was a secret contract and that the bank was buying the research. As experience has shown, that is not true: the center conducts independent, high-quality research and strengthens Switzerland as a knowledge location. The university and the bank later published the details of the collaboration, despite pressure from outside.

The current initiatives by UBS and ETH are different: they do not affect research and teaching. This is also expressly laid down in the cooperation agreement, which the NZZ has received.

In addition, rights and obligations are neatly listed. For example, UBS will have the right to hold up to four company events per year in the new building for 25 years and to be visible on site, for example with a co-working space or a coffee bar. ETH and UBS choose the name of the building together, with the university making the final decision. It also determines which user groups may use the new building.

Mesot says that the ETH was founded in 1855 to modernize Switzerland and that it has always worked together with companies. “We are proud of this partnership and have nothing to hide.”