The group to which the two senior bankers are appointed highlights the close collaboration between investment banking, capital markets and wealth management that the Zurich-listed bank melded together in a structural change in 2020.

UBS has appointed Nicola Pantone and Rodolphe Larqué as the new co-heads of UBS Global Wealth Management Capital Markets in Asia-Pacific. They succeed Conrad Huber who has taken on the role of business sector head for GWM Greater China SG, Indonesia and Japan International.

With more than 20 years of experience in capital markets and derivatives, Pantone joins from HSBC where he was head of wealth sales for Asia-Pacific, running a cross-asset, multi-product salesforce since 2016. He has experience in equity derivatives in his previous roles leading equity derivatives sales teams for Asia at HSBC, for Hong Kong at Société Générale and for London and Hong Kong at Deutsche Bank.

Larqué comes from Credit Suisse Private Banking APAC where he was head of managed solutions for Asia-Pacific and head of products in Singapore, managing a team of over 50 product specialists across the region. Prior to that, he was head of fund solutions for Asia-Pacific, responsible for fund selection and advisory, and head of structured products advisory, APAC, spending 10 years in structuring and advising on structured products. 

The two senior figures will start in October and report functionally to Patrick Grob, co-head of distribution IB [investment banking] Global Markets. Pantone will be based in Hong Kong and report locally to Dan Murphy, co-head of Distribution, IB Global Markets APAC. Larqué will be based in Singapore and report locally to Eric Lafon, co-head of Distribution IB Global Markets.

The bank has been changing its wealth management structure. In 2020 it launched its global wealth management and investment bank collaboration and unified the capital markets teams in GWM Switzerland and International and investment banking for global markets to give clients access to investment opportunities and product expertise. 

The combined teams have delivered 86 per cent of 2019 revenues in the first six months of 2021.