IFR Editor-at-large Keith Mullin
Hmmm. Tough call. Not only is Vereker joining an investment bank whose strategy is to play second fiddle to wealth management and which is still in deleveraging and shrink mode, he’s joining as head of corporate client solutions in EMEA, the segment that includes client coverage, advisory, capital market solutions and financing solutions for corporate, financial institutions and sponsor clients.
Put another way, he’s moving to a regional role (one of three) in a segment that’s expected to account – globally – for just a third of the total revenues of a rapidly shrinking investment bank. On paper, that’s the most junior gig the energy and natural resources M&A banker has had in years.
Just review his past history: he left Morgan Stanley in 2005 as head of the European utilities group to join Lehman as global co-head of power and head of European natural resources; a nice leg-up. When Christian Meissner and Riccardo Banchetti replaced Jeremy Isaacs as EMEA CEO in Lehman’s dying days, Vereker was tapped to be co-head of European investment banking with Alexis de Rosnay. Just after Nomura’s acquisition of Lehman’s European and Asian business, Vereker got another boost, co-heading EMEA investment banking alongside Meissner.
When Meissner ran as fast as his legs could carry him away from Nomura to join Bank of America Merrill Lynch (a good shout because he’s now CEO of Global Corporate and Investment Banking), Vereker was named joint head of global investment banking with Hiroyuki Suzuki. His final move took him to the IB vice chairmanship. [BTW, UBS couldn’t even get the press release right: saying he was joint head of global investment banking when he’s been vice-chairman for over six months!]
Everyone sensed he was desperate to get out of Nomura but his latest move suggests he may have been more desperate than we thought. That said, I assume his new boss Andrea Orcel is making it worth his while.
It was no secret that Vereker was positioning himself – or was being positioned – near the exit door at Nomura. His move back in September to a vice-chairman role just as the Glencore/Xstrata merger was meandering towards its end-game (Vereker is advising Xstrata) was widely seen as coinciding with his own end-game at the Japanese bank. That gave Orcel a six-month window to secure his man.
On the plus side, it’s true that Orcel is actively bringing in talent to force a shift away from fixed-income and give the investment bank some advisory clout. For example, he rescued Piero Novelli from Nomura in January to be chairman of M&A; Vereker’s arrival is consistent with this shift.
Proving that there no loyalty in investment banking, Orcel rather unceremoniously shoved David Soanes aside to make way for Vereker. In his statement, Orcel said that continuing to strengthen the firm’s institutional client franchise in Europe is crucial. He said he was “convinced that somebody of William’s calibre will significantly contribute towards achieving our ambitions in the region”. In the light of events, you imagine Orcel was equally unconvinced, therefore, that Soanes could significantly contribute even though he only appointed him into the role in October 2012 from his previous role as global head of capital markets.
In a back to the future move, Soanes is moving to head up a newly created global FIG business, an area he knows like the proverbial back of his hand.
DCM diaspora
Elsewhere, it’s almost sad to see how UBS’s DCM team is crumbling as the flip side of the bank’s lunge away from fixed-income. Allegra Berman, co-head of EMEA DCM quit a couple of weeks ago; Mark Wheatcroft, former head of European debt syndicate, moved to Mizuho International in a similar role; Raj Malhotra left in December as head of DCM for South-East Asia to join Nomura in a similar role; Michael Cummings only lasted 11 months at UBS before scuttling back to Credit Suisse this month to be head of LatAm DCM; Guy Wylie jumped to RBS in Hong Kong in January to run the primary markets business while Richard Luddington, UBS’s former vice chairman of capital markets, started his new role at Morgan Stanley this week.
Last time I looked, Fabio Lisanti and Mike Davidson were still in situ as global co-heads of DCM but it’s worth checking on a daily basis. The biggest mystery of all is what’s happened to Soanes’ erstwhile capital markets deputy, the redoubtable Rob Jolliffe.
Ever since he was taken out of DCM into what sounded to me like a dreadful role trying to join up the dots in emerging markets across investment banking, capital markets, FICC and equities, he’s been missing in action.
Everyone, including people at UBS, thought he had slipped quietly away but UBS’s own HR department discovered to their shock and surprise that as of a couple of weeks ago he was still on the books, though I suspect the EM platform remains eminently unjoined up.
