UBS’s Rodney Ward is joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch as chairman of Asia-Pacific global corporate and investment banking (GCIB), according to an internal bank memo sent out to all of BoA Merrill's employees in Asia-Pacific yesterday.
This marks yet another banker from UBS that BoA Merrill’s president for Asia-Pacific, Matthew Koder, appears to have wooed from his former firm.
In this newly created role, the bank told employees that Ward “will focus on further developing and strengthening client relationships and promoting cross-marketing across the GCIB franchise in the region”.
Ward will report to Koder and he is expected to join the bank no later than July 2012.
Koder said in the memo that “while the bank has achieved great progress in building out its GCIB platform over the past several years, there remains significant upside for this business”. Koder added that Ward’s appointment helps to ensure that BoA Merrill is “well-placed to take advantage of the opportunity and is focused on delivering the breadth of the entire bank to its clients”.
Koder seems to be on a roll in hiring from UBS. Last May BoA Merrill hired James Fleming, who previously worked with Koder at UBS, as co-head of Asia equity capital markets alongside Jason Cox. Fleming and Cox have since been promoted to co-heads of global capital markets for Asia-Pacific. Soon afterwards, the bank hired former UBS syndicate banker Philip Wong, as well.
At UBS, Ward was most recently president of Asia investment banking. Prior to that, he was chairman of Asia. He began his banking career with SG Warburg and has more than 30 years of industry experience.
