People: UBS expands derivatives structuring

UBS has further expanded its global equities structuring platform with the addition of Marcus Overhaus, yet another ex-Deutsche Bank employee swelling the ranks at the Swiss bank

UBS has expanded its global equities structuring (GES) platform, naming four regional heads and a series of global heads all under the leadership of global head of equities structuring Marcus Overhaus, formerly head of quantitative products at Deutsche Bank. The appointments mark something of a trend for former Deutsche structured products bankers to take up roles at UBS.

Overhaus reports to joint global heads of equities Yassine Bouhara and Francois Gouws. Overhaus joined UBS at the beginning of this year at the same time as Ricardo Honegger, who was previously head of global markets for the Middle East and North Africa at Deutsche Bank before leaving in January 2009 and moving to Japan. Honegger is based in London as the bank's head of global synthetic equity, reporting to Bouhara and Gouws. Bouhara joined UBS from Deutsche Bank in May 2010.

"The mandate of this group includes investment strategies - that is, our alpha algo -, beta - and beta + strategies targeting institutional investors and corporate derivatives with embedded optionality, a dedicated synthetic equity structuring effort and dedicated hybrid structuring in collaboration with our colleagues in Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities," says Overhaus.

Of the new appointments, Eric Bensoussan leads the march as the head of GES for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and interim global head of derivatives structuring. Based in London, Bensoussan was formerly a managing director involved in the structuring of products for retail, corporate, hedge fund and institutional clients globally at Deutsche Bank.

"The matrix structure of global products and regions is designed to avoid silos," says Overhaus. "The global product heads, driving their respective product globally, need to work in close collaboration with their regional heads to drive the regional effort."

UBS has named Daryl Chen as head of GES for Asia-Pacific. Chen, who is based in Hong Kong, has spent the past few years running institutional client coverage for equity structured solutions in Asia ex-Japan for the bank. Prior to that, he worked at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, where he was a managing director in charge of equity structured products sales.

Elsewhere in the region, Elaine Chow has been named head of GES for Australia after five years leading the Australian structuring team and a total of 16 years at UBS. Chow sits on the Australian equities management committee.

The bank has named Chris Leone as interim head of GES for the Americas. Leone is based in Stamford and remains regional co-head of equity derivatives trading and regional head of risk management. He joined UBS more than two years ago from Deutsche, where he was head of equity derivatives trading.

Of the new global product heads at UBS, Xavier de La Porte du Theil has been named global head of investment strategies in London. Du Theil has spent six years at the bank, most recently as head of the financial engineering group in the Alternative Investment Solutions (AIS) business. Prior to that, he was head of exotic structuring at Commerzbank.

Andrew Ferraris has joined UBS as global head of quantitative products one and managing director in London. Ferraris was most recently a partner at BlueCrest Capital, prior to which he spent 11 years at Deutsche.

Inderpal Gujral has been named global head of synthetic structuring in London. Gujral joined UBS in September 2010 from Royal Bank of Scotland, where he was responsible for structuring custom index products.

Altaf Kassam has joined the bank as global head of equity market strategies and managing director in London, and was also a former Deutsche employee.

Meanwhile, Richard Walters has been promoted to the position of global head of fund structuring in London. Walters has spent 16 years at UBS in a number of trading roles, the most recent of which was co-head of AIS Trading.

The expansion follows the acquisition of Luxembourg Financial Group, led by former Deutsche Bank structured products head Johan Groothaert.

Deborah Fuhr is to join Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) as head of global delta one strategy, according to a source close to the bank. Fuhr's new role includes a focus on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other exchange-traded products.

She will report to Piers Butler, head of BAML's Europe, Middle East and Africa global equity, macro and events group.

Fuhr's departure has left a gap in Blackrock's ETF research department, which will now be taken over by the Blackrock Investment Institute. The institute was established in April to improve the insights provided to clients and investors about ETFs and how to use them, says a Blackrock source. Russ Koesterich, global chief investment strategist at iShares, heads the institute, and Lee Kempler, former director of knowledge at McKinsey, is executive director. Both are based in San Francisco.

Fuhr joined Blackrock in September 2008 as global head of ETF research and implementation strategy, and was responsible for producing the company's ETF Landscape reports. Prior to that, she held roles at Barclays Global Investors (which was taken over by Blackrock) and Morgan Stanley.

Amilcare Police, formerly London-based head of equity derivatives sales and multi-asset third-party distribution sales at HSBC, has joined Merrill Lynch Wealth Management as head of credit and banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Based in London, Police will report to Ileana Musa, head of international credit and banking, and locally to David Jervis, head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management EMEA. Police will be responsible for the management of all credit and banking activities across the region, including product development and distribution.

At HSBC, Police led vanilla and exotics sales. Prior to joining HSBC, he was global head of equity derivatives and equity cash sales at ABN Amro.

Investec's head of equity derivatives Andrew Brogden and head of equities, Rob Reid, two senior figures that have played significant roles in building Investec's structured products distribution arm, have left the firm. Like most of Investec's structured products team, Reid and Brogden joined Investec Structured Products in August 2007 from Abbey Financial Markets, Santander's structured products division. Gary Dale, head of intermediary sales at Investec in London, says the duo left to pursue personal interests. "The business will continue to run itself, and if it does recruit it will be internally," says Dale.

Rainer Ruecker has been named managing director and head of public distribution trading at UBS. Based in Zurich, Ruecker will head the new part of the Swiss bank's equity structuring team, which will sit across all of its regional desks quoting equity derivative products to exchanges and other trading venues. Ruecker joined UBS from Citi, where he helped build the bank's European public distribution franchise.

UBS has also appointed Michael Ilg, Sebastian Schmidt and Johannes Murken to the equity structuring team. All three worked with Ruecker at Citi and are based in Zurich.

Marcel Kreis will become chairman of private banking Asia-Pacific at Credit Suisse at the start of 2012. His role as head of private banking Asia-Pacific will be filled by head of private banking Italy Francesco de Ferrari, who has relocated to Singapore to assume the role of deputy head of private banking Asia-Pacific before taking up the more senior role in January 2012.

De Ferrari will report to Walter Berchtold, chief executive of private banking, and Osama Abbasi, chief executive of Asia-Pacific at the bank.

Tim Eisenhauer, former global head of custom and strategy indexes at Standard & Poor's (S&P) in Sydney, has left the firm. Eisenhauer relocated to New York in July 2005 to head S&P's global custom index business before making ther switch back to the Australia office in 2008. He has been replaced by Simon Karaban, according to an S&P official.

Ferdinando Samaria has been named head of global commodities at UniCredit Corporate and Investment Banking in London. Samaria was formerly head of market risk at the bank. Head of global commodities is a new post that marks the breakout of commodities from the equities division. He reports to TJ Lim, head of global markets.

Samaria has more than 15 years' experience in risk management, financial engineering and trading. He joined UniCredit in 1998 as chief risk officer, chief financial officer and head of trading for former investment banking arm UBM. He was named head of structured derivatives trading in 2006 and more recently head of market risk.

Malcolm Mui has joined Nomura as executive director of the fixed-income syndicate desk. Mui was formerly at National Australia Bank covering principal investment, and before that at Bear Stearns originating, structuring, marketing and syndicating synthetic credit to non-Japan Asia. At Nomura, Mui reports to Mark Leahy, head of debt origination and fixed income for non-Japan Asia.

Vinayak Singh, formerly an associate in global equities and commodity derivatives at BNP Paribas in India, has left the bank to join the Edhec Business School.

Concetta Caruso, previously head of global institutional operations at Capital Group, has been named chief operating officer at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in Switzerland. Caruso has previously worked in the same role at JP Morgan.