UBS AG, the Swiss bank suffering from massive write-downs and its role in a U.S. tax-evasion scheme, announced the latest shake-up in its top executive ranks with the surprise departure of CEO Marcel Rohner, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Rohner is being replaced by 65-year-old Oswald Grübel, who had beenCEO at Swiss rival Credit Suisse Group until he retired in 2007. In astatement, UBS said Rohner told UBS’s board in January that he plannedto retire as CEO after the conclusion of the “ongoing investment bankrepositioning and wealth management restructuring phase.”
But Rohner’s departure comes less than two years after he was namedCEO. In July 2007, Rohner replaced Peter Wuffli just as the bank wascoming to grips with massive write-downs tied to bad bets on securitiesunderpinned by subprime mortgage loans.
Separately, the Financial Times reports that UBS was accused of “serious failure” by Luxembourg’s financial regulator for its custodian role of a $1.4 billion fund that allegedly funneled money to Bernard Madoff’s admitted $50-billion Ponzi scheme.