UBS restructures high-level reporting lines for WM

FWR Staff

8 November 2007

Megabank to eliminate three of seven international regions early next year. Marten Hoekstra, previously head of UBS' wealth-management business in the U.S., has been given responsibility for all of the Swiss bank's private-client operations in the Americas. This and other changes to the reporting structure at the top of UBS' come four months after Raoul Weil became head of Zurich-based NAME UBS Wealth Management.

In other changes, Juerg Zeltner, formerly head of UBS Wealth Management in Belgium, Germany and central Europe, has seen his geographic purview expand with the addition of the Scandinavia, Finland and eastern Europe ; Francesco Morra has been put in charge of Iberia, France, the Benelux countries, Ireland, the U.K., the Middle East and Africa in addition to Italy, for which he had previously directed UBS' wealth-management business.

Segments

Kathryn Shih will continue as head of UBS Wealth Management in the Asia-Pacific region.

The main effect of Weil's overhaul of UBS' wealth-management operations -- which take effect on 1 February 2008 -- is to reduce the number of its regional heads from seven to four. The new region chiefs report directly to Weil.

Other former unit heads -- Martin Liechti for the Americas ex-U.S., Dieter Kiefer for western Europe, Michel Adjadj for the Middle East and Matthew Brumsen for the U.K. -- will stay on in their jobs but report to their respective region chiefs not to Weil as they had done.

Weil became head of UBS Wealth Management in July 2007 when the previous incumbent Marcel Rohmer became CEO of the bank after the departure of Peter Wuffli. Before then Weil had been in charge of UBS' international -- read "non-Swiss" -- wealth management operations: the very area whose reporting structure he has just moved to streamline.

Weil plans to make UBS, the world's biggest wealth manager by assets, more responsive to the needs of clients by strengthening local services and by segmenting clients according to the origins of their wealth. "Our services are not only aligned to the amount of assets that clients have, but also increasingly to their source of wealth," he says. "An entrepreneur, for example, has different needs than a corporate executive."

In other moves, Anton Stadelmann, CIO for UBS Wealth Management and its business-banking division, is moving to the U.S. where he will assume a similar, though presumably smaller-scale role. He will report to his successor Mark Branson, now head of UBS Securities Japan. Branson is leaving Tokyo for Zurich. -FWR

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