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UBS shakes up wealth business to align more closely with investment bank
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UBS has overhauled its wealth management business in preparation for the inauguration of the division’s new co-heads, Iqbal Khan and Rob Karofsky, next week.
The reorganization, announced to employees Thursday morning, is designed to make its dominant wealth management business more aligned with its investment banking and asset management unit.
It builds on a long-term strategy by Switzerland’s biggest bank to try to sell more banking services to its ultra-wealthy customers, while also converting investment banking clients into wealth management account holders.
“Our most important priority will remain unchanged: delivering exceptional results for clients every day,” Khan and Karofsky said in a team memo, seen by the Financial Times.
Last month, UBS announced that Khan – who previously ran the bank’s wealth management business alone – would share responsibility with Karofsky, who previously ran the group’s investment bank.
Khan was also named head of Asia-Pacific, while Karofsky was put in charge of the Americas.
The reshuffle was seen as UBS grooms two of its most likely successors to chief executive Sergio Ermotti.
Under changes announced Thursday, which people briefed on the plans said Khan and Karofsky had been working on since the beginning of the year, former Credit Suisse executive Yves-Alain Sommerhalder was given oversight of several lines of businesses that bring the business of wealth management closer together. to other parts of the bank.
Starting next week, Sommerhalder will head a new division called GWM Solutions, which will oversee units focused on investment management, markets, lending, ultra-wealthy clients and alternative investments.
In a sign of the growing importance of the Asian market for UBS, the bank said that Patrick Grob, who would lead the new alternative investments division within GWM Solutions, would move to the region and from September would be president of the Asia-Pacific business. .
UBS also said its Latin America business, which has been bolstered by the addition of teams from Credit Suisse, would be separate from its Americas division and continue to be led by Marcello Chilov.
Meanwhile, Jason Chandler will move from being head of GWM Americas to chair, with Michael Camacho brought in from JPMorgan to be head of GWM US.