(Bloomberg News) UBS AG Americas Chief Executive Officer Robert McCann named three former Merrill Lynch & Co. colleagues to help reverse a three-year slide in the Swiss bank's U.S. market share.
Michael Stewart, Robert Mulholland and Brian Hull, who already work for Zurich-based UBS, will join a six-member executive committee led by McCann, the CEO wrote in a staff memo scheduled for distribution today. The panel includes Samuel Molinaro, an ex-Bear Stearns Cos. chief financial officer who joined UBS last month, and Shawn Lytle, head of money management in the Americas.
McCann, 54, is the ex-Merrill brokerage chief who helped restore profit at UBS's U.S. retail brokerage since joining in 2009. He's turning his attention to the investment bank after UBS, Switzerland's biggest lender, suffered a $2.3 billion loss from unauthorized trading. The firm has said its trading and mergers-advisory franchise should be simpler, with more consistent profit and less need for capital.
"More of my time is going to be spent on our investment bank," McCann said in an interview today. "None of this will happen overnight. I've been working at the wealth management turnaround for two and a half years, and I expect this to take an equally long period, if not a little longer, but we're putting a stake in the ground, and we started today."
UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, 51, another former Merrill banker, will take part in an "Americas Town Hall" meeting tomorrow with employees, according to the memo.
Targeting Bureaucracy
McCann's goals include "eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy that is impeding our ability to adapt to changing markets," he wrote in the memo.
Where past regional CEOs held ceremonial and sales responsibilities without direct oversight of global business lines, McCann said he expects to have more responsibility for the bank's biggest three U.S. businesses, including brokerage, money management and investment banking.
"Sergio has changed the job of regional CEO and what it means," McCann said. "He's made me responsible and accountable for driving our successes as a company in the Americas."
Team Members
Stewart, 43, hired from Bank of America Corp. in July to be co-head of global equities, became the sole head in October when his co-heads, Francois Gouws and Yassine Bouhara, resigned in the wake of the unauthorized trading loss.
Mulholland, 59, head of wealth management and investment solutions, and Hull, 52, who leads strategic clients and partnerships, were hired by McCann in November 2009.
Molinaro, 54, was hired as the UBS investment bank's chief operating officer. Lytle, 42, has been with UBS since 2002, when he joined from JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.