UBS Group has appointed Sarah Youngwood as Group Chief Financial Officer, effective in May 2022.
JPMorgan Chase woman
Sarah Youngwood, who will join the UBS Group Executive Board at the beginning of March 2022, will replace Kirt Gardner as CFO following his decision to step down from his role in May, to pursue other opportunities.
She joins UBS Group from JPMorgan Chase’s Consumer & Community Banking line of business, where she was Chief Financial Officer since 2016.
Since 2020, her role at JPM Chase also included leading finance for the firm’s global technology unit, as well as the diversity & inclusion team. Prior to that, she was Head of Investor Relations since 2012.
Youngwood spent other 14 years in various roles in the Financial Institutions Group within JPM’s Investment Bank in Paris, London, and New York.
The new Chief Financial Officer will replace Kirt Gardner, who joined UBS in 2013 and was named Group Chief Financial Officer and a member of the UBS Group Executive Board in January 2016. Gardner will support the new CFO during her two-month onboarding period before retiring from UBS.
UBS Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers thanked Kirt Gardner for being instrumental in maintaining the bank’s financial position and safeguarding client and investor trust through different market environments.
“I’m also excited to welcome Sarah Youngwood to the UBS team in her role as Group CFO and Group Executive Board member. With her strong track record, in-depth finance expertise, and experience across various banking areas, Sarah is ideally suited to lead our finance function into the future.”
Ralph Hamers named UBS CEO in 2020
UBS Group chief executive Ralph Hamers started his role in November 2020, replacing Sergio Ermotti as the head off Switzerland’s largest bank.
The new boss joined UBS from ING, where he spent three decades representing the Dutch bank and led its transformation into a leading digital bank over the course of the last years.
At ING, he held multiple senior-level roles such as Head of Network Management for Retail Banking Direct and International, Global Head of Commercial Banking Network, General Manager, Deputy General Manager Global Lending Risk Management, Head of Media Finance Group, Relationship Manager Structured Finance in the Global Clients Divison and Regional CEO for the Netherlands and Belgium branches. In 2013, he was appointed CEO.
“Ralph is the right CEO to lead our business into its next chapter. A seasoned and well-respected banker with proven expertise in digital transformation, Ralph has an impressive track record leading ING Group for more than six years. As the industry undergoes fundamental change, Ralph is the person to lead UBS’s continued transformation and build upon its successful strategy as the world’s largest and only truly global wealth manager and the leading universal bank in Switzerland, enhanced by its investment bank and asset management”, UBS Group AG Board Chairman Axel A Weber said at the time.
