Austrian Banker driven by her ambition

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Banker driven by her ambition
By Eric Frey and Haig Simonian
Published: January 8 2009 02:00 | Last updated: January 8 2009 02:00
Sonja Kohn showed characteristic bravado yesterday with a statement saying she was working flat out in Vienna on a concept for the future of Bank Medici, which she founded in 1994.

Since appearing like a peacock on the grey, provincial financial scene in the Viennese capital, Mrs Kohn, now 60, has been a single-minded, entrepreneurial force.

Trading on experience gained in New York, where she set up a small financial company in the 1980s, she returned to Vienna, where she had been born to Holocaust refugees, to create Medici Finanz, a boutique financial intermediary.

In some ways, her allure was similar to that of Wolfgang Flöttl, the young investment banker and fund manager who at around the same time made and then lost a fortune for Bawag, the union-owned bank initially run by his father. In a city where a handful of bankers envisaged a more lively and significant financial centre, people such as Mrs Kohn offered a brighter future.

That may explain why Gerhard Randa, a top banker and head of Bank Austria, took a 25 per cent stake in Mrs Kohn's business. Similarly, Stefan Zapotocky, then a top securities executive at the bank and later a joint chief executive of the Vienna stock exchange, was among Mrs Kohn's backers.

Much of the reason for Mrs Kohn's success lay in her striving character. "She was a good but not exceptional student," recalls a school-time acquaintance who asks not to be named. "But she was always ambitious."

Mrs Kohn, who was born Türk, spent her early years among Vienna's small Jewish community. After marrying Erwin Kohn, the scion of an entrepreneurial but also modest Jewish family, the couple turned their attention abroad.

By the 1970s, they had established an import-export business, trading in watches, among other things, and moved for a while to Milan. Political instability in Italy soon prompted another move, this time to Switzerland, helping to establish the international network that later proved to be so useful.

By the mid-1980s, the couple moved again, this time to New York. It was here that two vital, and perhaps connected, developments occurred. The couple took up residence in Monsey, a small town north of New York City known for its large, ultraorthodox Jewish community.

It was at that time that Mrs Kohn embraced an increasingly orthodox Judaism, in time cutting her hair short and wearing a wig as her faith required. In her professional life, she came into contact with other ultraorthodox Jews who were active in banking and finance - eventually meeting Bernard Madoff.

"She was someone with not a very big business, some contacts and lots of ambition," recalls a banker who met her at the time.

On her return to Vienna in the early 1990s, Mrs Kohn traded on her New York past, propagating the image of a highly successful woman on Wall Street with excellent contacts.

Her CV attracted bankers such as Mr Randa, who in recent Austrian interviews has played down the connection, and other high-profile clients.

By 2003, Medici gained a banking licence and built further on the apparently contradictory mix of pushiness and conservatism that had served Mrs Kohn so well. Noticing that the Florentine mercantile family name enjoyed no protection, she had chosen it to afford her company the desired tone, even adding an invented coat of arms for greater impact.

Bank Medici, which had 16 employees, provided a range of classic merchant banking services, including real estate. But fund management through its Herald family of products was its mainstay.

Mrs Kohn remained its driving force. Often travelling, particularly in eastern Europe given Vienna's growing role as a focal point for the region, she was rarely seen at big public events in Austria.

Her few public appearances usually involved work for the Dorotheum, the city's auction house, with which she for some time was involved developing Italian contacts. Neither of the Kohn's two daughters went into the family business.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009