of UBS Group AG before taking sole control of the investment bank. Upon his acceptance of the position, UBS paid Orcel Sfr6.3 million in cash and awarded him Sfr18.5 million in stock options, for a total sign-on bonus of Sfr25 million (£17 million, $26.2 million, or €23 million). In January 2013, following the Libor scandal, Orcel was called before the British Parliament's banking standards commission to explain the company's role in the scandal. Present for nearly three hours of testimony, he expressed regret for the firm's role and stated to commissioner Andrew Tyrie: "we all got probably too arrogant, too self-convinced that things were correct the way they were. I think the industry needs to change." Later that year he was compensated $26 million, in line with a 7% clawback of the company's bonus pool. Although he was hired in a primarily managerial role, he continued to advise some of the firm's higher profile clients and institutional partners. In March 2013, Orcel rejoined his brother Riccardo to negotiate an investment into VTB from a Qatari sovereign wealth fund. From early 2013 to late 2014 Orcel initiated a corporate restructuring of the investment bank, to "[stop] trying to be the biggest investment bank and [focus] on being the best". With a focus on return-on-investment (ROI), deleveraging, and cost reduction, Orcel increased majority capital positions while diminishing the size of the bank. In May 2015, he was the highest earning executive at UBS Group AG, grossing $8 million in base salary. In June 2016, Orcel offered MPS–a client of his at Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis–$5.6 billion (€5 billion) in debt and equity when it was facing liquidity issues and was reaching out to a handful of banks. Orcel made this offer to counter a bailout by the Italian government but was jointly rejected by the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and MPS. In February 2016, he orchestrated the merger of Vodafone's and Liberty Global's operations in the Netherlands to create a joint venture in a deal worth $1.1 billion (€1 billion). From 2012 to 2017 Orcel fired thousands of employees in order to boost profitability, reducing the company's wage requirements by $3 billion. He reportedly handed lists of people to fire to managing directors while many UBS employees learned of their firing as they came to work and "found their access cards no longer worked." In May 2017, he approved