Martin Wiedmann leaves UBS

The departure of Martin Wiedmann from UBS in Zurich last week sparked a guessing game among his peers over which bank he is set to join, reports RiskNews ' sister publication FX Week .

Wiedmann was joint head of global foreign exchange distribution and services alongside London-based Fabian Shey, who became sole manager of that group when Wiedmann resigned from the bank on April 27. The pair had overseen UBS’s massive investment in e-commerce and its subsequent toppling of Citigroup as the number one forex bank last year.

Some industry sources expect a move to the Credit Suisse Group to manage a foreign exchange initiative within the banking division of Credit Suisse Financial Services (CSFS). The group recently brought together private banking and corporate and retail banking within CSFS under Walter Berchtold, the Zurich-based manager of trading and sales at CSFS. Wiedmann’s rumoured role would be within this new group.

A spokesperson at Credit Suisse in Zurich said the bank does not comment on individual moves so could not confirm or deny this speculation.

However, with forex high on the agenda for private banking clients, such a move would enable Wiedmann to take on a high-profile role and stay in Zurich. Other potential moves would likely take him away from Switzerland.

His name has been connected with moves to big foreign exchange players such as Deutsche and Citigroup, though both banks said they do not expect him to surface there. Sources at HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and CSFB, all banks that are expanding forex and e-forex businesses, also said they were not anticipating Wiedmann’s imminent arrival.

Another possibility is that Wiedmann is set to join a hedge fund. Such a move would mirror that of other forex heavyweights Rob Standing, the ex-JP Morgan rates chief whose fund, London Diversified Fund Management, made more than £55 million ($100 million) profits in its first year; or Michael DeSa, a former colleague of Wiedmann’s during his time at Citigroup, who recently left a high-profile job at Merrill Lynch to set up a fund in New York.