UBS's top Americas executive stepping down Oct. 3

Dive Brief:

Tom Naratil, Swiss lender UBS’s top executive in the Americas, is stepping down Oct. 3, the bank announced Tuesday.
Concurrent with that move, the bank is rolling out two other executive changes. It hired Naureen Hassan, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s first vice president and chief operating officer, to succeed Naratil as president of UBS Americas, effective that day.
UBS also promoted Iqbal Khan to become the bank’s sole president of global wealth management. Naratil and Khan had been co-presidents of that division since 2019, when UBS hired Khan away from rival Credit Suisse.

Dive Insight:

The latter move positions Khan as a potential successor to CEO Ralph Hamers — although Hamers himself has been serving in UBS’s top role for less than two years.

“Leadership transitions can naturally prompt questions about the future,” Naratil and Khan wrote in an internal memo seen by the Financial Times. “Our business has never been in better shape, and with our ambitious growth strategy well underway, the time is right to transition to our next chapter.”

In Naratil, UBS loses an executive with vast institutional knowledge. He came to UBS in 2000, when the bank acquired PaineWebber and has since worn myriad hats, serving as CFO and chief risk officer for wealth management in the Americas at the turn of the 2010s, then as CFO for the full organization from 2011 to 2015. He added chief operating officer to his title in 2014.

Naratil became UBS’s president in the Americas in 2016, and took the co-lead role in global wealth management in 2018. Profit before tax in the bank’s Americas segment of global wealth management has doubled to $2 billion under Naratil’s leadership, the bank said Tuesday.

Hamers called Naratil a “champion of our strategy and transformation and a vocal advocate of our diversity initiatives” in a statement Tuesday.

“I am confident that Naureen and Iqbal will build upon Tom’s success and continue to deliver for our clients and achieve our strategic ambitions,” Hamers said.

Hassan, in her new role, is expected to lead a revamp of UBS’s Wealth Management Americas platform — an undertaking that would integrate Wealthfront into the UBS structure. The bank acquired the U.S. robo-adviser in a $1.4 billion January deal set to close during the second half of 2022. Hassan will also oversee the expansion of UBS’s digitally customized banking services, and be responsible for navigating shifts in public policy and for ensuring sound regulatory and reputational risk governance, the bank said Tuesday.

Before working with the New York Fed, Hassan served from 2016 to 2020 as chief digital officer for wealth management at Morgan Stanley. Hassan wouldn’t be the only recent Morgan Stanley vet to join UBS. The Swiss bank’s shareholders elected former Morgan Stanley President Colm Kelleher to become UBS’s chairman in April.

Simultaneously installing Hassan and Khan into their new roles may underscore UBS’s two-pronged approach to growth — balancing its effort to reach a broader swath of everyday-affluent users, under Hassan’s purview, with its push to continue as the world’s top lender to the super-rich.

Khan, for his part, has been credited with rapidly expanding UBS’s wealth management business. That division counts more than $3 trillion in assets, according to the Financial Times.

Bloomberg, earlier this week, reported that UBS was considering making Khan its sole chief of global wealth management. But the outlet’s sources indicated Naratil might continue to lead the bank’s Americas business.

Khan’s 2019 move from Credit Suisse to UBS generated sensational press when he confronted a private investigator Credit Suisse had hired to follow him, fearing Khan would persuade other talent to join UBS — and bring their business leads, too. Credit Suisse’s then-CEO, Tidjane Thiam, resigned amid the reputational black eye.

Khan’s “global network, background as a financial and regulatory auditor, risk management expertise, and his relentless focus on client outcomes and commercial impact make him the ideal person to lead [UBS’s global wealth management division] and will ensure a seamless continuation of our global growth strategy,” the bank said Tuesday in its press release.

UBS’s head of U.S. wealth management, Jason Chandler, will continue in his role but report to Khan, the Financial Times reported.