UBS to nominate BlueMountain exec Staley to board: Reuters

UBS said on Wednesday it would nominate Jes Staley, an executive at New York-based hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management, to the board of the Swiss bank at its May shareholder meeting.

Staley, a 57-year-old Boston native, is a former long-time executive of U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co and one of a host of former bankers who have in recent years moved to roles in private equity, hedge funds and other more lightly regulated corners of high finance, broadly referred to as shadow banking.

“His professional expertise gained from three decades of working in several top leadership functions in global banking make him ideally suited to strengthen the board of UBS,” Axel Weber, chairman of the Swiss bank, said in a statement on the appointment of Staley, who joined BlueMountain last year.

Earlier this year, BlueMountain joined a legal challenge against a law that allows Puerto Rico – which faces a heavy debt burden, a weak economy and significantly underfunded pension obligations – to restructure some of its debt.

UBS’ U.S. brokerage unit is among banks to be accused of inappropriately putting clients’ money into closed-end funds with heavy exposure to Puerto Rico municipal bonds, which declined sharply last year.

If shareholders elect Staley, he will be nominated to the bank’s risk committee, UBS said.

(Reporting By Katharina Bart; Editing by Maria Sheahan and Anand Basu)