Is corporate Switzerland picking up some of the bad habits of its much bigger German neighbour? Wednesday’s surprise resignation of ABB’s wunderkind chief executive, Fred Kindle, after “irreconcilable differences” with the board seems to smack of classic Deutschland AG boardroom manoeuvring. Everyone agrees that the 48-year-old Mr Kindle has been doing an outstanding job. He was named Swiss Entrepreneur of the Year last December. He was the anointed successor to Jürgen Dormann, the former ABB chief executive and chairman, who brought the engineering group back from the dead. He continued Mr Dormann’s turnround strategy, sorting out its huge asbestos litigation problems in the US, shedding non-strategic assets and focusing the company on its power and automation technology businesses.

It has been a case study in successful restructuring. The company is now flush with cash and ready to splash out again on acquisitions. Hubertus von Grünberg, who replaced Mr Dormann as ABB chairman last May, did not hesitate to lavish praise on Mr Kindle for “driving the company to the extraordinary level of performance it achieved over the past three years”.