Reorganising the investment bank at UBS will take two to three years to complete, its chairman said on Sunday, a day after Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel quit over the $2.3 billion rogue trading scandal.
The UBS board on Saturday accepted the resignation of its 67-year-old German-born chief executive and appointed as his interim replacement Sergio Ermotti, 51, who hails from Switzerland's Italian-speaking region of Ticino.
The board is looking at both internal and external candidates to fill the post permanently and Chairman Kaspar Villiger has said ex-Bundesbank head Axel Weber has already been involved in the CEO selection process as an independent advisor. But Weber is still not due to take over as UBS's chairman until 2013, Villiger said.
Switzerland's biggest bank has asked the dapper, multi-lingual Ermotti, who was passed over for the CEO job at Italy's UniCredit , to speed up a scaling back of the investment bank. "Revamping the bank will probably take the next two or three years until it's all completed," Villiger told the NZZ am Sonntag. He also said that Ermotti, who joined UBS in April as head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, and has worked in London and New York, is a strong candidate to remain as CEO.
"He has lots of experience and brings a lot of what's needed to run the bank. I also think it's good that he's Swiss," Villiger said. With the Swiss public losing its patience with UBS after a series of crippling crises, Ermotti's nationality may give him an edge over competitors and help him deal with politicians and regulators.