UBS Appointment: Head of the Equity Capital Markets Financial Institutions Group, Americas

We are delighted to announce that Jeff Evans will join UBS as a Managing Director and Head of the Equity Capital Markets Financial Institutions Group reporting to Tom Fox.

Jeff joins UBS after spending ten years at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, serving recently as their head of global equity capital markets, and responsible for the creation of one of the most recognized and respected capital markets platforms – focused predominantly on financial institutions. His experience and domain expertise in the financial services sector is critical to building a best in class Financial Institutions Group in the Americas. We are looking forward to Jeff’s arrival as we believe his leadership and sector knowledge will truly enhance the strength of our team.

In partnership with IBD, our FIG ECM business in the Americas continues to be a key contributor to our overall Americas ECM business. The fee pool generated by financial institutions has been and should by all indicators continue to be one of the largest and most dynamic among all business sectors. Jeff’s appointment reflects our continued investment in building our GCM, ECM and FIG businesses in this region.

UBS appointments in Global Equities Structuring
In line with our goal of creating a world class Global Equities Structuring (GES) platform, we are pleased to announce a series of appointments that will support the expansion of our capabilities. Effective immediately, four Regional Heads will assume overall responsibility for leveraging client and revenue opportunities across GES. The regional heads will work in close collaboration with newly appointed Global Product Heads in order to drive synergies across our product offerings globally. All heads will report into Marcus Overhaus, Global Head of Equities Structuring.

Regional Heads
Eric Bensoussan joins as EMEA Head of GES and Managing Director, based in London. Eric brings over 13 years of experience in Equities and Equities Structuring, most recently from Deutsche Bank where he structured products across GES for retail, corporate, hedge fund and institutional clients.

Daryl Chen has been appointed APAC Head of GES, based in Hong Kong. Daryl brings more than 13 years of experience to the role, including a year with UBS during which he has run institutional client coverage for equity structured solutions in Asia ex-Japan. Prior to joining UBS, Daryl worked at JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank where he was a Managing Director in charge of Equity Structured Products Sales.

Elaine Chow has been appointed Australian Head of GES, based in Sydney. Elaine has been with UBS for over 16 years, leading the Australian structuring team for the last five years. She is experienced in structuring products across the full GES product offering on behalf of all types of Australian clients. She also sits on the Australian Equities Management Committee.

Chris Leone has been appointed Americas Head of GES, based in Stamford. Chris also continues as Regional co-head of Equity Derivatives Trading and Regional Head of Risk Management. He has been with UBS for more than two years, prior to which he spent eight years at Deutsche Bank where he ran US Equity Derivatives Trading. He also has four years of buy side experience. Chris has agreed to take on this role on an interim basis while we build out our capabilities in the US.

Global Product Heads
Eric Bensoussan has been appointed Global Head of Derivatives Structuring on an interim basis in addition to his role as European Head.

Xavier de La Porte du Theil has been appointed as Global Head of Investment Strategies in London. He has been with UBS for six years and was most recently head of the Financial Engineering Group for AIS. Prior to joining UBS in 2005, Xavier ran exotic structuring at Commerzbank.

Andrew Ferraris joins UBS as Global Head of Quantitative Products One and Managing Director, based in London, with more than 17 years of experience in equity quantitative analytics. Most recently he was a Partner at BlueCrest Capital driving automated execution strategies. Prior to this, he spent 11 years at Deutsche Bank.

Inderpal Gujral has been appointed as Global Head of Synthetic Structuring, based in London. He joined UBS in September 2010 with nine years of experience in Structuring. Previously, he was responsible for structuring custom Index products at RBS.

Altaf Kassam joins us as Global Head of Equity Market Strategies and Managing Director in London, bringing more than 17 years of experience in capital markets, most recently at Deutsche Bank. During his career he has run European and Asian equity derivatives strategy and global equity quantitative strategy teams, leading each to top 3 Institutional Investor rankings.

Richard Walters has been appointed Global Head of Fund Structuring in London. He has been with UBS for 16 years and has previously held a number of trading roles, the most recent of which was co-head of AIS Trading.

Commenting on the appointments, Marcus Overhaus, Global Head of Equities Structuring says: “I am delighted with these new appointments and am pleased to demonstrate both our continued investment in this division and our commitment to delivering the best results for our clients. UBS has a world leading equities structuring franchise, which will be further enhanced and boosted by the additional Global Product and Regional Heads put in place.”