UBS shakes up investment bank management

The new head of UBS's investment bank has stamped his mark on the division with a management reshuffle, days after the Swiss bank said it was pulling back from fixed income trading and cutting 10,000 jobs.

Andrea Orcel, a dealmaker poached from Bank of America Merrill Lynch earlier this year, has moved co-head of the investment banking advisory business Simon Warshaw to a new role, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

UBS's new corporate client solutions division - which will house its merger and acquisitions advisory business, and the teams helping with stock market listings, bond issues and other types of financings - will also now be split along regional rather than product lines, the memo showed.

Orcel became sole head of the investment bank last week after former co-head Carsten Kengeter, in charge at the time of a $2.3 billion rogue trading scandal last September, stepped aside to oversee the winding down of the fixed income business.

Tougher regulations and capital constraints forced UBS's hand, making it the first bank to pull back so drastically in this area, although rivals have also cut back activities such as equities trading, where volumes and margins are thin.

"With this announcement, we closed the strategic debate," Orcel said in the memo, referring to last week's changes. The 10,000 job cuts will fall across the group, although the investment bank will be hit hardest.

Orcel's arrival over the summer raised fears within UBS that an "old guard" of bankers would be moved aside, with his allies given choice jobs. The Italian was followed to UBS by several BofA ML bankers.

But Orcel has picked UBS veteran David Soanes, a capital markets specialist, to run corporate client solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the memo showed.

In the Americas he had turned to senior investment banker Steve Cummings, while Matthew Grounds, who had run the global investment banking advisory business with Warshaw, will be in charge of the advisory and financing business for Asia Pacific.

"David Soanes is a UBS-lifer but he is pragmatic and has the 'star potential' that Orcel looks for in bankers," said one UBS banker in EMEA.

Orcel also gave a key role to newer arrival Rajeev Misra, a former Deutsche Bank executive who had run fixed income - the division encompassing bond and rates trading which is now out of favor - and helped build it up in the past three years.

Misra will run financial solutions globally.

Roberto Hoornweg, who was also responsible for fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC), has resigned, a spokesman for UBS confirmed.

Warshaw, seen by many internally as one of the pillars of the Swiss bank's famed advisory business which UBS inherited with SG Warburg - an investment bank it bought in 1995 - will report to Orcel, working on "certain initiatives" to develop the corporate client solutions' group in EMEA.

UBS's trading businesses will come under the investor client services group, and will contribute two-thirds of total revenues in the investment bank, the memo said. The existing global head of equities Mike Stewart will remain in that position.

Chris Vogelgesang and George Athanasopoulos will run foreign exchange and precious metals, the main business lines to survive from the former FICC business. Chris Murphy was named as global head of rates and credit. (Reporting by Katharina Bart and Sarah White; Editing by Mark Potter)