Two of Europe’s banking giants picked the leaders who would help chart their next era as they named successors for the chairmen who steered them through a decade of restructuring.
UBS Group AG on Saturday nominated former Morgan Stanley president Colm Kelleher to succeed Axel Weber as chairman next year. A day earlier, Deutsche Bank AG proposed Dutch insurance veteran Alexander Wynaendts for the same role, replacing Paul Achleitner.
Wynaendts, 61, ran Dutch insurer Aegon NV for 12 years before leaving last year. Aegon typically gets the majority of its profit from the US, where it owns the insurer Transamerica.
Wynaendts worked at ABN Amro’s investment banking and private banking units before joining Aegon in 1997. In 2019, he joined the board of Citigroup Inc, which he would leave before taking on the Deutsche Bank role.
Kelleher, 64, spent three decades at Morgan Stanley, where he served as chief financial officer and ran the trading business before rising to president. One of nine siblings who grew up in Ireland’s County Cork and an Oxford University graduate, he helped Morgan Stanley’s investment bank rebuild client confidence after hedge funds pulled money during the crash.
Deutsche Bank touted Wynaendts’s tech savvy and experience dealing with regulators, as Germany’s largest lender looks to revamp its digital platforms and improve its standing with authorities after costly misconduct fines.
UBS turned to a Wall Street veteran whose previous firm found success with the UBS model of a giant wealth management unit and an investment bank focused on stock trading.
While both firms have been reshaped over the past decade, they enter their next phase from very different starting points. UBS has returned to strong levels of profitability and its shares trade on a par with the book value of its equity, one of the few major European banks to do so. Deutsche Bank only recently posted its first profit in six years, and still trades at a 60 percent discount to its book value.
The biggest banks in Germany and Switzerland — which have faced political scrutiny at home in recent years — prioritized relevant financial expertise over national ties in turning to the Dutch and Irish executives.
Both men have extensive experience in the US, where European banks have consistently lost share to stronger US rivals since the global financial crisis.
Deutsche Bank did nominate Norbert Winkeljohann, a German who serves as Bayer AG’s chairman, as vice chairman. UBS followed a similar model by proposing Lukas Gaehwiler, chairman of the board at its Swiss unit, for the same position.
Together with Antonio Horta-Osorio — a native of Portugal who ran a British bank before replacing Urs Rohner as Credit Suisse Group AG chairman earlier this year — they represent a new era for the traditional powers in European investment banking.
The two handovers are not set to take place until annual shareholder meetings in the spring, but both firms had aimed to have candidates in place well ahead of time to ensure a smooth transition.
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