LONDON - William Vereker, the former joint head of global investment banking at Nomura, has joined UBS as head of corporate client solutions in Europe.
The appointment is the latest move by Andrea Orcel, chief of UBS’s investment bank, to overhaul the division that is undergoing a drastic revamp, as the Swiss bank shifts its operations towards its wealth management unit.
Mr. Vereker gained a deal-making reputation by advising natural resource companies including Xstrata in its recent $30 billion deal with the commodities trading company Glencore International.
The London-based banker previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers before joining Nomura after the Japanese bank acquired the European and Asian operations of the defunct American firm. He was appointed vice chairman of Nomura’s investment banking division in September.
It is the second time so far this year that UBS has poached leading figures from Nomura.
In January, Piero Novelli was appointed global chairman of mergers and acquisitions at the Swiss bank after he left Nomura where he had been its global co-head of the merger advice business.
Last year, UBS said would cut as many as 10,000 jobs to reduce costs and shrink its investment banking operations. Over the next two years, the Swiss bank plans to reduce its work force by as much as 16 percent, to 54,000.
On Monday, UBS also said David Soanes, who previously ran the bank’s corporate client solutions division in Europe, had been appointed as chief of its global financial institutions group.
During the first quarter of the year, the Swiss bank fell three positions, to tenth place, in the European investment banking fees table, according to the data provider Thomson Retuers.
UBS’s bankers, though, remain some of the best paid. The firm’s average compensation for each of its full-time employees totaled 191,646 euros ($250,000) in 2012, according to the data provider SNL Financial.
The figure placed UBS second behind rival Swiss bank Credit Suisse in the rankings of average pay at 17 of the largest global banks, and well ahead of U.S. firms JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.
