UBS Bankers Who Won and Lost in Sergio Ermotti’s Shake-Up

(Bloomberg) -- Sergio Ermotti shook up UBS Group AG today, elevating an outsider that might succeed him as chief executive officer and pushing another potential CEO candidate out of the firm. The Swiss bank also now has women in two of its most senior roles.

Ermotti has been in his post for eight years. In the year since the departure of investment-banking chief Andrea Orcel -- another former CEO candidate -- he’s grappled with a sliding share price, erratic performance at the key wealth business and huge legal fines. Here are some of the prominent winners and losers in his management revamp.

The Winners

Iqbal Khan

Khan, 43, had been the head of arch-rival Credit Suisse Group AG’s crucial international wealth-management unit before falling out with CEO Tidjane Thiam. Now, he becomes co-head of UBS’s wealth business with Tom Naratil, a role that positions him as a potential successor to Ermotti.

Pakistani-born, Khan came to Switzerland in his youth and was educated at the University of Zurich. He joined Credit Suisse in his late 30s after a rapid ascent through the ranks of Ernst & Young, where he audited UBS. Vontobel analysts credit Khan with helping drive a surge in earnings at his Credit Suisse division. However, he failed to get a promotion amid a corporate reorganization earlier this year.

Sabine Keller-Busse

Keller-Busse, 54, succeeds Ulrich Koerner as president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in addition to her current role as UBS’s chief operating officer. Another former employee of Credit Suisse, the Swiss-educated banker joined UBS as chief operating officer in Switzerland in 2010, taking on the same role for the entire company in 2018.

Suni Harford

Harford becomes the second woman on UBS’s executive board after Keller-Busse, and will take over Koerner’s other role as president of asset management. She had previously been that division’s head of investments. Harford, who is in her mid-50s, joined UBS in 2017 after a 24-year career at Citigroup Inc., where her roles included head of markets for North America.

The Losers

Martin Blessing

Blessing, the 56-year-old, German-born former CEO of Commerzbank AG, exits UBS on Dec. 31 after serving as co-head of the wealth business with Naratil. Blessing was once seen as a contender to succeed Ermotti, having made a name for himself restructuring the German bank following its rescue by taxpayers during the financial crisis. He joined UBS in 2016.

His departure had been widely expected after the erratic performance in wealth management since UBS combined two former businesses into a single unit last year. Clients pulled $1.7 billion from the unit in the second quarter.

Ulrich Koerner

Koerner, 56, is leaving the bank after serving as president of asset management and EMEA since 2014, and the bank’s chief operating officer before that. With the fund business far from reaching profit targets, UBS had been seeking to replace him, finews.ch reported earlier this year. Koerner joined UBS in 2009 after a 10-year career at Credit Suisse, and had previously worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Telling in London at otelling1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, ;Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, Marion Dakers

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