UBS Hires Cummings as Chairman of Americas Investment Bank

UBS AG (UBSN), Switzerland’s largest bank, hired former Wachovia Corp. executive Stephen Cummings as chairman of investment banking in the Americas.

Cummings, 55, will join April 18 and work in New York, the Zurich-based company said in a statement today. He’ll work with Aryeh Bourkoff, head of Americas investment banking, and report to Jimmy Neissa, Matthew Grounds and Simon Warshaw, joint global heads of investment banking, UBS said.

“His deep expertise and insight will help us enhance and support our investment-banking business during what will be a strong growth phase for our U.S. business,” Neissa said in the statement.

Cummings was most recently a senior executive vice president at Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia and head of corporate and investment banking there. He left in January 2009, after Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) completed its purchase of the bank, according to records on the website of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Cummings started his career at Kidder, Peabody & Co. and later joined Bowles Hollowell Conner & Co., a Charlotte-based boutique founded by Erskine Bowles. Cummings joined Wachovia predecessor First Union Corp. in 1998 when it bought Bowles Hollowell.

UBS last month appointed Grounds and Warshaw co-heads of global investment-banking business with Neissa after John Wall retired, and promoted Bourkoff to lead investment banking in the Americas. The Swiss lender hired more than 15 people for investment banking in the Americas in the first quarter, Bourkoff said in a Bloomberg Television interview last week. He said that hiring will continue in the second quarter.

UBS’s revenue last year from managing stock and bond sales and advising clients on merger deals was the lowest compared with its eight biggest competitors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zachary R. Mider in New York at zmider1@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jennifer Sondag at jsondag@bloomberg.net.