Marco Valla: Overlooked at Barclays, crowned at UBS
Marco Valla reigns supreme at UBS. Two years after joining the bank from Barclays, UBS announced yesterday that it has promoted Valla, an Italian who was hired in 2023 as global co-head of banking alongside Javier Oficialdegui, as the sole global head of the banking business. Oficialdegui - who wants to relocate to Madrid next year - is stepping down and becoming chair of global banking instead.
In his new role, Javier will report to Marco. By default, so too will UBS's corporate and sponsor bankers, its global capital markets bankers and its regional bankers. Some seem very happy about this. One MD tells us that Oficialdegui wasn't seen much in London and that Valla is perceived as the more thrusting option. "It's time to be more ambitious," he declares.
Valla's total omnipotence has been a long time coming. Before joining UBS two years ago, he spent 14 years at Barclays, which purchased him along with Lehman in 2008. At Barclays, Valla ran the TMT and consumer retail investment banking groups, and everyone there thought he would be promoted to run Barclays' investment bank. However, when Barclays instead hired Cathal Deasy for that role, Valla left for UBS. The WSJ reported that the Swiss bank persuaded him with a substantial pay rise.
Valla's pole position in UBS's management structure has been blurred by a confusion of corporate titles. When he joined in 2023, it was as co-head of global banking alongside Oficialdegui. At that time, Valla displaced Ros L'Esperance, another ex-Lehman Brothers banker who had been co-head of the team with Oficialdegui. She remains at UBS, but in a more-client facing role.
In 2024, Valla was given his most major promotion at UBS. He was made co-president of the investment bank alongside the more markets focused George Athanasopoulos, while Oficialdegui was left as the sole head of global banking. Given that president is superior to "global head", Valla was effectively made Oficialdegui's boss. Now that Oficialdegui is stepping down, Valla is now simply assuming the day-to-day running of the investment banking business as well.
Valla will need some help in this. UBS accordingly announced a raft of related promotions yesterday, including: Jeff Hinton, who's now global co-head of corporate and sponsor advisory with Nestor Paz-Galindo; Brendan Connolly, who's now global head of capital markets Richard Casavechia as co-head of global banking Americas with Jon Levin; Philippe Chryssicopoulos who's co-head of global banking EMEA with Christian Lesueur and Gaetano Bassolino and Greg Pierce who are the co-heads of global banking for APAC.
Many of these new subsidiary promotions involve UBS lifers. However, Casavechia and Hinton came from Barclays with Valla, as did various others. Only Levin joined UBS via Credit Suisse.
Valla's amalgamation of roles at the helm of UBS's investment bank comes after grumbling internally among Credit Suisse bankers who'd hoped that they might come out on top themselves. Many have since reconvened at Santander. Various senior UBS bankers have also left during Valla's reign, including Marc Warm, UBS's former global head of leveraged finance, David Costel, its former global co-head of coverage and healthcare and Jens Becker, an ex-Credit Suisse banker.
Critics of Valla have pointed to UBS's apparently poor performance in US investment banking, where June data from Dealogic indicated that the bank ranked 23rd by wallet share for 2025, down from 5th in 2021. However, UBS has gained market share in America since 2023 versus the position it occupied before acquiring Credit Suisse, and has achieved a 17% increase in its global M&A pipeline this year.
UBS declined to comment.
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