Baer will stay on as honorary chairman as of the annual general meeting of the bank’s shareholders on 11 April. Daniel Sauter, a board member since 2007, will stand for election to the chairmanship on that AGM date, Julius Baer said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in his role as honorary chairman, Baer will continue to support the bank in “finding constructive solutions for the past chapters affecting Julius Baer and the banking industry at large,” the bank said, pointing out that he has been elected to chair a special committee overseeing the ongoing cooperation with US authorities over tax issues.

In February Julius Baer said it expected to have to pass over client data as part of the US investigation into wealthy US citizens who have used Swiss banks to evade US taxes. Along with a number of other Swiss banks, Julius Baer no longer provides offshore banking services to US clients.

The Swiss bank oversaw SFr258 billion of client assets at the end of last year.

The decision at Julius Baer comes at a time the US is carrying out a criminal probe into 11 Swiss and Swiss-style banks; they are suspected of selling offshore tax evasion services to tens of thousands of wealthy US citizens. Inquiries are focused on Credit Suisse and Basler Kantonalbank among others. In January one of these banks, Wegelin & Co, which claims to be the oldest Swiss bank, was sold to Raiffeisen due to the threat to the bank of the legal dispute with the US. 

Earlier this month, signaling a continued focus on tax evasion, the Senate adopted an amendment which will give the Treasury Department more power to combat offshore tax havens in an attempt to reduce the deficit. The amendment, created by Senators Carl Levin, Kent Conrad and Sheldon Whitehouse, gives the Treasury the same powers against foreign governments and financial institutions in the fight against tax evasion that it currently holds to tackle money laundering under Section 311 of the Patriot Act.

Meanwhile, the lower house of the Swiss parliament has voted in favor of a tax treaty with the US. The treaty will see the Alpine state forced to provide data on clients suspected of tax evasion. The only time when it is lawful to give away client information under the present regime is in tax fraud cases. The treaty was approved by the upper house of parliament already in December of last year. However, the US Senate has yet to approve the legislation.

Proponents of the treaty believe that it will ease some of the immense pressure the country is under from the revenue-hungry US, and reduce pressure on individual institutions by creating a wider framework.