UBS Hires Credit Suisse Banker to Boost Deals for Rich Clients

(Bloomberg) -- UBS Group AG hired wealth banker Desh Sharma from Credit Suisse Group AG to help expand the types of financing and lending it offers and provide more sophisticated services to its richest clients.

Sharma, who was a strategic client partner at Credit Suisse, will join UBS’s global family office unit to create a team focusing on rich individuals with lots of businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. Sharma, who will start Jan. 4, will be global head of the newly-formed corporate and institutional team and report to Joe Stadler, who heads the global family office unit, UBS said in a memo to employees seen by Bloomberg and confirmed by a spokesperson.

Sharma is also bringing a team of four other bankers with him to UBS, the memo said. The new team will primarily serve the existing 2,000 clients in the global family office unit and focus on originating deals, syndicating structures and providing financing and lending for the unit’s most important clients. It will work with teams in the investment bank and the asset management unit.

UBS two years ago started a drive to increase lending, reinforcing the strategy last year by hiring Iqbal Khan, who had developed a similar approach in his former role as head of Credit Suisse’s international wealth-management unit. Switzerland’s largest bank issued about $18 billion to wealthy clients at the private-banking unit in the first nine months of this year, bringing it within striking distance of a 2021 target of $20 billion to $30 billion of net new loans annually.

UBS Lombard Loan Drive Gathers Pace as Bank Nears Targets

Earlier this year, Khan poached former Credit Suisse colleague Remi Mennesson to lead a new global financing team focused on increasing collaboration between the bank’s wealth management and investment banking units. Mennesson’s team focuses on corporate derivatives and structured solutions, lending against more complex and less liquid forms of collateral and financing transactions for the bank’s wealthiest customers.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.