UBS’s top tier shaken up by new boss Orcel
UBS has shaken up its investment bank management just days after the Swiss bank revealed it is winding down its fixed income operations and cutting 10,000 staff.
New investment boss Andrea Orcel has led the reshuffle, months after joining from rival Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Orcel has shifted former co-head of the advisory business Simon Warshaw into a new role in corporate client solutions.
Warshaw is widely regarded as one of the old guard, a veteran from SG Warburg which UBS acquired in 1995.
He is now taking charge of client-facing initiatives, the bank revealed in a memo seen by City A.M., though the exact nature of his projects are not yet known.
The overall shake-up reforms the whole structure of the investment bank.
Instead of being organised by product group, the arm is now arranged into client groups with the aim of offering a broader range of services in a more unified fashion.
The two branches are corporate client solutions and investor client solutions.
The corporate arm is comprised of operations including equity capital markets, debt capital markets and leveraged finance, and will generate one-third of investment banking revenues, with David Soanes heading EMEA, Steve Cummings the Americas, Matther Grounds heading up Asia Pacific and Rajeev Misra responsible for financing solutions globally,
Investor client services includes trading, post-trade services and wider partnerships in fund investments.
Mike Stewart now heads equities globally, Chris Vogelgesang and George Athanasopoulos both head FX and precious metals, while Chris Murphy heads rates and credit.
All of those heads report to Orcel.
“We are now positioned to excel on a global stage in the businesses where we have chosen to compete, and have the resources to invest, from talent through to technology,” he told staff in the memo. “We will now be in a completely new category to other banks and financial services institutions.”
PROFILE: SIMON WARSHAW
UBS was last night playing down rumours of a power struggle in the investment bank, insisting that the new management set up simply reflects the firm’s new focus around the client.
Andrea Orcel – a renowned dealmaker and charismatic banker – is believed to polarise opinion of other managers.
But sources at the bank denied that is the reason for former advisory co-head Simon Warshaw to move away from management and into a client-facing position.
“This is absolutely not a demotion – it is simply a change of focus for Simon,” said the source.
“It is a completely normal progression. He has had several years in his management role and is moving to something he likes doing on the client side.”
Before he took the new position, Warshaw was joint head of investment banking and a member of the arm’s executive committee.
Before that he was head of EMEA investment banking, which came after he jointly-headed the unit in the UK.
Previously he ran the media investment banking business for the division.