Another bad quarter and possible agreement with U.S. gov cited as spurs. Swiss UBS is reportedly on the verge of hiring Robert McCann to run its wealth-management business in the Americas, which is dominated by its U.S. retail-brokerage unit. McCann, who stepped down as head of Merrill Lynch's Global Wealth Management (GWM) division shortly after the wirehouse became part of Bank of America in January 2009, would replace Marten Hoekstra, head of UBS's wealth management business in the western hemisphere.

Media reports have had McCann shortlisted to run UBS' American wealth-management unit for a while -- along with several others including former Citigroup wealth-management chief Sallie Krawcheck, who has just been tapped to run Bank of America's entire private-client and investment-management complex including Merrill.

Persistent

UBS has consistently said that Hoekstra's job isn't up for grabs.

But a report in the Financial Times says UBS and McCann have been talking, and recent developments -- an impending settlement between UBS and the U.S. government over the Swiss bank's disclosure of the names of some of U.S.-based private-banking clients in aid of a U.S. probe of tax evasion; UBS' recent report of another loss-making quarter -- have served to hurry things along.

UBS was said to have restructured its wealth-management business this week to separate its Swiss-banking business from offshore operations, but left its private-client businesses in the Americas untouched -- and Hoekstra still in charge of them. -FWR

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