Beleaguered Swiss bank UBS on Wednesday said chairman Peter Kurer will not seek re-election at April's annual general meeting, and that the board is nominating former Swiss finance minister Kaspar Villiger to succeed him.
The move came barely a week after the bank's chief executive Marcel Rohner resigned and was replaced by former Credit Suisse chief executive Oswald Gruebel.
It marks another major change in top management at the bank, which has been struggling to recover after losing billions in the financial crisis and which is also caught up in a legal dispute with the United States over a tax evasion probe.
Kurer said most of planned tasks he set out to achieve, including the reduction of risks and reexamination of the bank's strategy, "has been accomplished in a short period of time."
"I now think it is time to complete this transition and leave the office at the end of my one-year term," he said in a statement.
Villiger, who was finance minister between 1995 and 2003, said he accepted the nomination as these are "exceptional times for UBS and Switzerland, and I recognize the difficulties that still lie ahead."
"This is precisely why I have accepted to chair the Board of UBS, out of a sense of service to this country and its people," he said.
TXT 24
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