UBS splits wealth management role as part of executive reshuffle

By Noele Illien

ZURICH (Reuters) -UBS said on Thursday it would split its top wealth management role as part of a shake-up of its executive board, creating new responsibilities for two leading contenders to eventually run the Swiss bank after CEO Sergio Ermotti.

Rob Karofsky, head of UBS's investment bank, will in July become head of the Americas and co-president of global wealth management alongside current wealth management boss Iqbal Khan, who will now also take charge of the Asia-Pacific region.

Khan, a Swiss citizen, will relocate to Asia to assume the new role from Sept. 1. Khan and Karofsky, an American, are among the top internal candidates to succeed Ermotti, who the bank has indicated could stay in charge until at least 2027.

Vontobel analyst Andreas Venditti described the reshuffle as more far-reaching than expected.

"With these changes, Iqbal and Rob are the prime candidates for UBS's CEO job," he said.

Ermotti said in a statement the new appointments put "even more emphasis on our long-term priorities and growth prospects, particularly in the Americas and Asia-Pacific".

According to a recent media report, Ermotti has rejected appointing an outsider as successor and intends to present internal candidates as he did when he last left UBS in 2020.

"Our goal is to really increase dramatically the chances that we can have an internal candidate," Ermotti told Reuters this month.

Beatriz Martin, president of UBS Europe, Middle East and Africa, is also regarded as a potential successor to Ermotti.

UBS, which is in the midst of integrating its longtime rival Credit Suisse, made the announcements ahead of the merger of the banks' main parent companies, scheduled to be legally completed on Friday. UBS acquired Credit Suisse last year.

Shares in the bank closed up just over 0.7%.

The parent merger is expected to allow the Swiss bank to get started with trickier stages of the integration such as combining IT systems, migrating clients from Credit Suisse and cutting the enlarged banks' workforce of more than 110,000.

As part of the rejig, former Credit Suisse CEO Ulrich Koerner will retire from the bank later this year, UBS said.

The bank also named George Athanasopoulos and Marco Valla investment bank co-presidents, part of a series of changes UBS is putting into effect from July 1.

Damian Vogel will take over the risk officer role from Christian Bluhm as part of a previously announced exit. Bluhm will remain in an advisory capacity.

The president of UBS Americas, Naureen Hassan, is to step down effective July 1, one of a string of female executives who have left the bank in the last year.

Separately, the Swiss finance ministry said on Thursday it had fined UBS 50,000 Swiss francs ($55,340) for failing to alert authorities to suspected money laundering tied to Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former president of Yemen who died in 2017.

The case, initially reported by Swiss public broadcaster SRF, related to transactions Saleh conducted after he opened a UBS account in 2004.

UBS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

($1 = 0.9035 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Noele Illien; Additional reporting by Rachel More and Oliver Hirt; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Mark Potter)