Switzerland?

Anyone know where Marten Hoekstra went? He was replaced at UBS which has a new CEO? What do you think?

he is proabley doing a lot of pre-dawn nike rides 

I liked Marten - think he was a victim of circumstance. The reality is he would be able to do just as good a job as mccann if given a fresh start. He really did take paine webber through a very strong period of growth and upgraded the fa productivity (at the cost of the bottom line)

all these ceos want to be like merrill – well merrill has not recruited or hired a non family related successful fa in my town in the last 5-7 years they have been a net liquidation firm of fas and wealth…

abom



You must have been with UBS/PW all your career.



No disrespect , but you have no idea what a real firm is

My manager doing backflips over what McCann has said to them so far.

Mine is cleaning his desk and printing his resume.

Cleaning his disk?  I think you missed a letter.  Is it the “i” or the “s”!!!

Cleaning his disk? I think you missed a letter. Is it the “i” or the “s”!!!

He HAS a desk.

A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN



NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–UBS AG (UBS) is beginning to untangle a strategic direction for its U.S. wealth management unit, now that a new leader is in place.



Appointed two weeks ago, former Merrill Lynch brokerage head Robert McCann has shown a threefold strategy: stop throwing buckets of money at new recruits; focus on retention; and stake a claim somewhere between mid-size firms and the biggest wirehouses.



His challenges are to quickly stanch client-money outflows and put a shine back on UBS’s reputation for financial advice, tarnished by the Swiss banking scandal. He also must combat persistent rumors–ones that he and other executives deny–that the parent company may sell or spin off the U.S. wealth management unit.



Over the past year, the other major brokerages in the U.S. merged with big banks or each other in a hurried effort to regain stability. UBS has been relatively idle, leaving many industry analysts wondering what direction UBS Wealth Management U.S. will take.



“We all know [McCann] has to have a plan or he wouldn’t have taken the job,” said Alois Pirker, wealth management research director at Aite Group. "It’s just a matter of how that plan unfolds and whether it is successful."



In an internal memo sent to brokers Monday, McCann said the division has two very important tasks right now: “The first is that we continue to run our day-to-day business during this necessary time of review and change,” he writes. "The second is to ramp up our collective response to the market challenges and opportunities through the delivery of a new strategic plan for the business."



In the memo, he announced his new management team, including six current members of the executive committee and four new hires, all colleagues of McCann’s at Merrill Lynch: Bob Mulholland, Brian Hull, John Brown and Paula Polito. Their new roles at UBS haven’t been announced.



Over the next 100 business days, the team will shape a strategy in light of its competitors’ directions, which are already somewhat clear: Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is going for the stand-alone model, while Wells Fargo Advisors and Merrill Lynch have jumped on the universal banking bandwagon. All three have the captive broker setup, rather than the independent model, where Raymond James Financial Inc. (RJF) has made a name for itself.



McCann insists there is no plan to spin off the division. Nor will there be any major acquisitions, and he will instead work with what he’s got. As he told Dow Jones Newswires when he was appointed, he has no desire for the kind of scale that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Advisors boast, each with about 15,000 to 18,000 brokers. Big isn’t necessarily best, he said.



When UBS reported earnings last week, its adviser count was about 7,300. It’s possible to be successful at that level, analysts say, but it will require the brokerage to make up for its lack in quantity with better quality. It will also mean they have to rebuild a good reputation, which Pirker says usually takes about three years.



The group is already pruning the tree, to make its brokerage force a bit on the higher end.



UBS’s adviser count is down roughly 650 brokers from the second quarter. The decline was partly due to the sale of about 275 brokers to Stifel Financial Corp. (SF) and the layoffs of roughly 150 low producers.



The unit also had its second straight quarter of client-asset outflows, which totaled $9.6 billion in the third quarter.



McCann says his priority is retention of top talent, which would help stop outflows. While brokers are notoriously focused on financial compensation, he says retention isn’t all about money.



“Really it’s a much richer stew than that,” McCann says. He plans to maintain an open architecture environment, pay brokers competitively, make UBS a place where they are proud to be, and ensure that clients trust them.



Brokers are now awaiting the unveiling of a compensation plan for 2010, which typically is done this time of year. Last week, UBS announced it will spread broker payouts on managed accounts over an entire quarter, rather than giving advisers their commissions in one lump sum at the quarter’s start. The company says this will “reduce wide fluctuations in monthly compensation payouts,” but it has irritated some brokers.



McCann speaks in an even more frugal vein about recruiting than he does about retention. He says he’s not interested in tossing around the biggest signing bonuses for new brokers. Late last year and early this year, UBS was offering recruits 200% or more of their previous annual production, and hundreds of brokers were signing up each month. Monthly recruitment has now dwindled into the single digits.



This change makes sense, Pirker says. Making selective, strategic hires is more effective at a time when the business is undergoing so many changes.



The firm is also pushing out its bottom tier of brokers. The sale of lower producers to Stifel and layoffs of other low producers in the third quarter clearly signal a direction, according to Pirker: "They don’t want their U.S. business to be made up of mediocre brokers."



The firm also is cutting costs through a management restructuring, removing some positions and converting some managers into producers.





(Annie Gasparro writes about financial advisers and their jobs, with a focus on the challenges brokers face as the industry moves from traditional stock brokerage to high-net-worth wealth management. She can be reached at 212-416-2244 or by email at [email protected].)





(Brett Philbin contributed to this article.)





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