UBP Hires Two Fund Executives in Effort to Rebound From Madoff

Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Author: Cristina Alesci, Bloomberg

Union Bancaire Privee, the private Swiss bank that lost $700 million with Bernard Madoff, hired two executives for new senior jobs in its fund-management unit as it seeks to restore investor confidence.

Sara Sprung, 46, a former portfolio manager at Fortress Investment Group LLC, was named chief investment officer of alternative investment at UBP Asset Management, the Geneva-based bank said today in a statement. Jonathan Morgan, 45, previously a managing director at Barclays Global Investors, will be head of research for alternative investment. Both will be based in New York.

UBP is seeking to raise $500 million for its first fund of hedge funds since its clients fell victim to Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. At least eight Geneva-based firms disclosed Madoff-related losses, undermining confidence in funds of funds, which earn fees by selecting investments for clients. Madoff was sentenced last month to 150 years to life.

“This is one of many steps we are taking to reinforce our commitment to alternative investments and proactively position the firm with hands-on expertise in trading and risk management,” said Matthew Stadtmauer, chief executive officer of UBP Asset Management.

UBP’s assets under management fell 26 percent to 100.7 billion Swiss francs ($93.5 billion) last year, including about 35 billion francs invested in hedge funds as of December 2008. The bank said in February it cut an undisclosed number of jobs.

Asset Allocation

Sprung, who starts July 15, will direct asset allocation and report to Stadtmauer. Besides managing money at New York- based Fortress, she was chief risk officer for liquid markets from 2006 to 2007.

She was a portfolio manager at hedge-fund firm Moore Capital Management LLC and a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co., both based in New York, from 1999 to 2005. Sprung is a 1984 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a bachelor of science in management.

Morgan, who started yesterday, joined San Francisco-based Barclays Global in 2005, where he ran its hedge-fund management group and oversaw investments. BlackRock Inc. of New York, the largest publicly traded U.S. asset manager, agreed last month to buy BGI, the fund unit of Barclays Plc, for $13.5 billion.

Prior to Barclays Global, Morgan was director of research and portfolio management at Julius Baer Holding AG, a Swiss bank, and worked as a fixed-income and foreign-exchange trading strategist at Caxton Associates LLC, a hedge-fund firm in New York. He received a bachelor of arts from Princeton University in New Jersey and a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cristina Alesci in New York at calesci2@bloomberg.net