The wealth management arm of Swiss investment bank UBS has created a new team to focus on trading strategies, in an effort to meet demand from ultra-wealthy clients for shorter-term trading options.
The group have hired Vinay Pande, former partner of Brevan Howard, one of Europe's largest hedge fund firms, to head up the new division, along with another former partner of the investment firm and two former employees.
"This is the first time (at UBS Wealth Management) that we have actively looked to focus on the more shorter-term horizon with respect with directional and relative value trades," chief investment officer for from ultra-high net worth clients at UBS Wealth Management, Simon Smiles told CNBC.
Pande exited the hedge fund group in October of last year, according to media reports at the time, having managed the Brevan Howard Strategic Macro Fund for the asset manager.
Pande will be appointed to the new role of managing director and head of trading strategies in the UBS Chief Investment Office, effective February 1st, 2016.
With close to $2 trillion in invested assets, UBS Wealth Management is the largest wealth manager in the world.
UBS said the new team's mandate is to generate short-term trade recommendations for clients, following increasing demand from UHNW investors for investing on a time horizon shorter than the wealth manager's standard six-month time frame.
"The market environment has changed, volatility is likely to remain elevated versus the very depressed records we have had for the last five years. So it's not just increasing demand for our clients in shorter term trading opportunities and ways of exploiting current market volatility, there has also been very obvious shift in the environment," Smiles said.
Jerry Lucas, also a former partner at Brevan Howard, along with Miguel Costa, and Yang Tang will join Pande's newly formed team.
The team worked together at Brevan Howard, and before were colleagues at Deutsche Bank. Smiles said the new team will be looking across assets and globally, employing the same methodology and systems they have used since their time at Deutsche Bank together.