UBS sheds 200 jobs in brokerage unit

UBS Wealth Management Americas, the profit-starved U.S. retail-brokerage unit of UBS AG, is firing about 200 people, including several senior executives, a company spokesman said.
The unit, which had no profit in 2009, is giving pink slips to about 200 people on its staff of 16,925, said spokesman Kris Kagel, confirming a report today in The Wall Street Journal.
The layoffs are focused on back-office and other support people but also include several executives who have been replaced by Robert McCann, the new chief executive of the brokerage group.
UBS’s brokerage force of just under 7,100 advisers is not affected, Mr. Kagel said.
Managing directors who have been let go include Doug Black, who was chief operating officer of private wealth management for ultrahigh-net-worth individuals; Jamie Price, who ran the private-wealth-management group before being replaced in January; Jay Messing, head of private-client-group sales; James Pierce, a vice chairman of the wealth management unit; and Michael Roberts, who ran trust services within the wealth-planning group.
Mr. McCann, who worked at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. almost continuously for more than 20 years before taking the reins of UBS Wealth Management last October, has hired several former Merrill executives to run the retail unit as part of what he calls the Americas Renewal Team. They include Robert Mulholland, who replaced Mr. Price as head of the branch system.
John Straus, who ran the private-wealth-management group for ultrahigh-net-worth investors, was replaced this year by former Merrill private-banking executive Brian Hull. Mr. Straus, who was shifted to run client strategic relationships, did not return a call for comment about his plans.
The new management team is focusing, in part, on cutting bureaucratic layers that Mr. McCann feels were imposed by the Swiss bank and diverted attention from motivating financial advisers.
While eager to stanch the outflow of top producers, Mr. McCann is not expected to try to catch up with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC’s 18,000 advisers, some 15,000 at Merrill (now owned by Bank of America Corp.) or the 13,000 spread throughout various units of Wells Fargo Bank (which includes the former Wachovia Securities LLC). Indeed, he is expected to position UBS Wealth Management as more flexible and advisory-friendly than rivals, with a platform less oriented toward proprietary products than larger competitors.
While all large brokerage firms suffered black eyes in the market debacles of early 2008 and early 2009, a number of UBS brokers left with many of their clients amid headlines about multibillion-dollar losses in the bank’s hedge fund and investment businesses, cross-border sanctions for selling tax-dodging schemes to ultrawealthy U.S. citizens and conflicted roles in selling auction-rate securities to retail investors.
UBS Wealth Management was created when UBS AG bought PaineWebber Inc. in the late 1990s.