Swiss bank UBS announced on Thursday that it has appointed Iqbal Khan, head of its wealth management division, as president of the bank’s Asia-Pacific region and Rob Karofsky, head of its investment banking division, as head of the Americas. Khan and Karofsky will co-lead UBS’ wealth management division, the bank said.
The move effectively makes Kahn and Karofsky the front-runners to replace Sergio Ermotti if he decides to retire, Vontobel analyst Andreas Venditti wrote in a note seen by Bloomberg on Thursday.
UBS has rejected a proposal to replace Ermotti with an outside candidate, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The bank plans to choose from among three internal candidates instead, which could be announced as early as next year’s annual general meeting, people familiar with the matter told the paper. Ermotti has said he plans to step down no later than 2027.
UBS said Khan will take over as head of Asia from Edmund Ko, who will remain with the bank as chairman of UBS’s Asia Pacific region. Khan will take over responsibility on September 1.
“[Khan] “He has a big task ahead of him, and there’s no guarantee he’ll succeed,” Johan Scholz, a banking analyst at Morningstar, told the Financial Times in March. “If he can deliver, it will be a major achievement for him.”
Karofsky’s move from the investment bank means George Athanasopoulos and Marko Vara will become co-presidents of the division, UBS said in a statement on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Karofsky’s promotion in the Americas means that UBS’s regional president for the Americas, Noureen Hassan, will step down on July 1. Hassan joined the bank in 2022 from the New York Fed.
Perhaps the most prominent executive to leave UBS in Thursday’s reshuffle was Ulrich Kellner, Credit Suisse’s last independent CEO. hairöMarner will step down from UBS’s board at the end of June after the merger with Credit Suisse is complete and is set to retire at the end of the year. His departure was reported by the Financial Times this month.
Another departure, the second of its kind, is UBS, which has named Damian Vogel as its next chief risk officer. Vogel will replace Christian Bloom, who left the bank in 2022 to pursue a career in photography, but returned six months later following the announcement of the UBS-Credit Suisse merger.
The UBS-Credit Suisse deal is expected to close on Friday, and the two companies plan to set up a single intermediate holding company in the United States next month, the banks said.
“The appointments to the Group Executive Board announced today will enable us to continue to progress on our integration path, realizing expected synergies and efficiencies, as well as further focus on our long-term priorities and growth prospects, particularly in the Americas and Asia Pacific,” Ermotti said in a statement on Thursday.
Khan and Karofsky are likely two of three possible CEO candidates, but the third remains a mystery. Analysts have suggested: Beatriz Martin-Jimenez, head of UBS’ non-core and legacy divisions, and Sabine Keller-Busse, head of UBS’s Swiss business, could also be in contention for the bank’s top job.
