The Luxembourg wealth manager is hiring one of UBS' former top lawyers to oversee legal and compliance, finews.com has learned. She is the latest prominent female top executive to join KBL under new CEO Juerg Zeltner.
KBL is naming Maria Leistner as its new head of legal and compliance, two sources familiar with the move told finews.com. Leistner left UBS, where she had clinched the top legal job in the wealth arm last year in a mega-merger between the international and American units, in April.
She is the latest in a series of prominent female top executives from UBS: KBL's Swiss CEO Dagmar Kamber-Borens spent 17 years at the Swiss giant; human resources boss Donna Burns was a global managing director at UBS' private bank, and Olga Miler oversaw a program targeting wealthy women.
KBL Revamp
Leistner, who didn't respond to a request for comment, begins at KBL by year-end, one of the people familiar with her move said. She will report to Juerg Zeltner, KBL's new CEO and an investor in a vehicle connected to the Luxembourg-based wealth manager (KBL itself is owned by Qatar's ruling al-Thani family).
She is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in finance, telling finews.ch (interview in German) last year that top management acts differently when women are included: «very efficiently, very directly. We express our opinions clearly. We have a fantastic atmosphere.»
Battle-Scarred Veteran
Leistner has been part of some of UBS' biggest legal tussles in recent years, including a high-stakes French criminal trial, in which the bank already suffered several major setbacks, as finews.com reported. She was general counsel of Credit Suisse's main wealth arm before joining UBS in 2016.
Zeltner, the former long-standing boss of UBS' private bank, is seeking to reinvent KBL into a «privé»-style partnership in the mold of Pictet, as finews.com reported in August. The 52-year-old Swiss banker left UBS nearly two years ago.
