UBS Plans to Name Ex-JPMorgan’s Staley to Board After Revamp
(Bloomberg) — UBS Group AG plans to name James E. Staley to its board, adding an executive once seen as a potential candidate for the top job at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Staley, 57, will stand for election at the firm’s annual general meeting in May, Switzerland’s biggest bank said in a statement today. Now managing partner at BlueMountain Capital Management LLC, Staley was previously chief executive officer of several JPMorgan units, including the investment bank. He will probably join UBS’s risk committee, the company said.
“His professional expertise gained from three decades of working in several top leadership functions in global banking make him ideally suited to strengthen the board of UBS,” UBS Chairman Axel Weber said in the statement.
Staley, if confirmed, would boost the board to 12 members after Rainer-Marc Frey, founder of RMF Investment Group, stepped down earlier this year. Staley joins as UBS created a holding company to make the lender easier to break up and prevent a failure from disrupting the financial system, a change that saw investors swap their stock for shares in the new parent which began trading last month.
The Zurich-based company also recently strengthened its risk management, appointing its treasurer Claude Moser to run a new group asset and liability division, to better cope with regulatory demands.
Staley began his banking career at Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. of New York in 1979, after graduating from Bowdoin College with a degree in economics. In 2012, he was moved from his role as CEO of the investment banking unit to chairman of the corporate and investment bank, one of a series of executive changes as JPMorgan grappled with wrong-way bets in its chief investment office in London.
In a separate statement UBS announced today it would delist the shares of UBS AG from the exchanges in Zurich and New York.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeffrey Vögeli in Zurich at jvogeli@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elisa Martinuzzi at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net Cindy Roberts
