UBS Wealth Management: Winners and Losers

Who emerged victorious from a major shuffle at the world's largest wealth manager, and who was left out in the cold? finews.asia parses who won and who lost in UBS' latest private banking revamp.

WINNERS:

Joe Stadler: The investment banker-turned-super-rich banker (pictured below) is emerging on top of yet another UBS wealth revamp. He lost much of his fiefdom last month, but is now taking on a far more demanding job and expansion mandate of UBS’ family office business.

Stadler should be bracing for bare-knuckles negotiating: family office clients drive a hard bargain on pricing. The family office business has been the subject of much back and forth: briefly housed in the investment bank, it is frequently fraught with internal politics over revenue-splitting with the securities unit. 

Salvatore «Chicco» di Stasi: The capital markets veteran emerges as Khan’s point person into the investment bank: di Stasi will oversee loan structuring and origination (except in the U.S.). The move is part of a wider lending push into more sophisticated loans, backed by anything from stocks and bonds to private equity and hedge fund holdings.

Patrick Grob: The ex-product engine – IPS – banker will become a «translator» between wealthy clients and the investment bank. Reporting both to Khan and to markets co-head George Athanasopoulos, Grob is tasked with building a middle bracket of the now-combined markets team. Khan has clearly vesting major trust in the Swiss banker: the markets tie-up «is a really exciting opportunity for us,» he noted on Tuesday.

Mark Haefele: The veteran markets commentator (pictured below) comes away from the revamp fortified: UBS is integrating its mandates business, the chief investment office, investment content, and wealth planning.

Haefele, with UBS since 2011, will also oversee cooperation with asset management.

Paul Crisci: UBS investment bank's top technologist is the most surprising winner to emerge from the shuffle. Based in San Francisco, Crisci is being tasked with unifying various threads of «private market» opportunities for wealthy clients. The investment bank last year began building bridges towards the effort; with Crisci’s help, Khan wants to tie them all together.

Caroline Kuhnert/Ali Janoudi: The duo was elevated to the same level as their former boss, Christine Novakovic. For Kuhnert (pictured below), not much is likely to change: she is already one of UBS’ top bankers to the ultra-rich in Europe.

By contrast, Janoudi, who runs wealth management in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East and Africa, is ceding some ground. Both emerge as winners with seats in Khan and Naratil’s top management.