UBS is moving its head of private banking Switzerland to run a unit which tailors investment bank-style products for the ultra-wealthy.
UBS said its head of private banking in Switzerland, Christian Wiesendanger, will take over the wider private bank's Investment Platforms and Solutions unit, or IPS, effective next week. The unit employs hundreds of experts, many of them former investment bankers, to draw up individualized products for the Swiss bank's wealthiest clients.
Switzerland's biggest bank created IPS in 2010 as a products and services unit for the wider bank, hiring copiously for the specialized unit. It has eased off that in recent months, including by trimming jobs, and refocused on sustainable investment performance for clients. IPS now totals roughly 2,500 bankers.
Rocky Tenure
For Wiesendanger, who had been in the Swiss job for six years, the move is a step up. His tenure as Swiss head, while long, had also been rocky: the ultra-rich segment in Switzerland, for example, is now under the auspices of overall UHNW head Josef Stadler.
It also marks a change for IPS: for the bulk of its existence, it has been run by U.S. or U.K. investment bankers like William Kennedy and Mike Stewart.
Wiesendanger, the first Swiss executive in the job in six years, takes up the role from Europe wealth management chairman Jakob Stott, who held it temporarily after Stewart bolted for Credit Suisse three months ago. He will continue to report to private banking head Juerg Zeltner, who has said the bank doesn't want net new money it can't earn fees with.
Internal Replacement
«Christian Wiesendanger has been able to successfully grow our wealth management activities in the key Swiss market as well as in the global ultra-high net worth business. This makes him ideal to run wealth management IPS as his next role,» UBS said in a statement.
Wiesendanger's Swiss private banking job will be taken by Anton Simonet (pictured above), a former Dresdner Bank banker who currently runs UBS' private bank in eastern Switzerland.
The 51-year-old Simonet will jointly report to Zeltner as well as Swiss head Martin Blessing. For Simonet, the move is also a significant step forward: wealth management Switzerland employs 1,400 people currently.
