McCann snags another top Merrill exec for UBS
Jonathan Kessler to oversee push to cross-sell banking products to wealthy client
UBS AG, seeking to boost profits from wealth management in the Americas, hired Jonathan Kessler from Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch to oversee a push to sell affluent customers more loans and banking products.
Kessler will lead a reorganized Banking and Lending Solutions unit starting in October, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The unit, previously called Banking Products, also hired Frank Destra to oversee mortgage sales. Destra, who ran the residential-lending business in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s banking unit, starts this month.
“It is essential for our banking platform to become an integral part of our wealth management offering to our advisors and clients,” the memo said.
The Zurich-based bank, Switzerland’s biggest, joins firms such as Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in trying to squeeze more revenue out of wealthy individuals as a weak economy and new regulations make it harder to earn money from loans and investment banking. Bankers have pushed so-called cross-selling for decades, often with little to show for it, to expand their business without having to recruit new customers.
Robert McCann, 52, the former Merrill Lynch & Co. executive appointed in October to head UBS Wealth Management Americas, is reorganizing the division to produce annual pretax profits of more than 1 billion Swiss francs ($961 million) in the next three to five years. It earned 32 million francs before taxes last year and had a 67 million loss in the second quarter because of restructuring charges.
The Wall Street Journal reported the hirings yesterday.
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