Further shake-ups at the top of UBS's investment bank IT team

Iain Plunkett, chief information officer of UBS’s investment bank and corporate centre and head of IT for the UK – and a key lieutenant of former group CIO, Michele Trogni – is leaving after 14 years at the bank, according to sources close to the situation.

Plunkett is set to join Barclays in February, where he will be running technology and operations across the group functions, reporting to Shaygan Kheradpir, the bank’s recently-installed head of operations and technology. Barclays has been on something of an IT recruitment spree at the senior ranks, having also hired Darryl West, former group chief information officer at Lloyds Banking Group, to run its technology functions.

Meanwhile, UBS’s senior technology team has been well and truly shaken up this year. In April, Michele Trogni, the New York-based group CIO, retired after 25 years at the bank. She was replaced by Oliver Bussmann, who joined from SAP, where he was global chief information officer, on 1 June.

Since then, Bussmann has made his presence felt. In May, as we revealed, Mark Ashton-Rigby, CIO for UBS’s investment bank, left to take the role of head of banking technology at J.P. Morgan in New York after less than a year in the job. Now, Plunkett, a group managing director in charge of technology for the UK investment bank and corporate centre is set to depart in November, according to the sources.

UBS is in the midst of reducing its annual IT budget from CHF3.6bn to CHF2.6bn. Over 2,000 IT jobs were cut in October last year, and it’s made greater use of outsourcing and offshoring jobs to cheaper locations, particularly in its corporate center.

Plunkett has held various roles at UBS since joining in 1999, including global head of finance, risk and operations IT, and CIO for the EMEA region. He started his career as a systems engineer at EDS Group in 1992, before moving on to Accenture in 1994, where he stayed for five years.

He has a degree in Information Engineering from the University of Strathclyde.

UBS didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Barclays also didn’t respond to requests for comment.