Marchionne and Voser to quit UBS board

Swiss bank UBS has announced that two prominent board members will not seek to renew their terms.

Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne and Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Peter Voser will not stand for re-election at the next UBS general assembly, on April 14, 2010.

“Sergio Marchionne and Peter Voser would both like in future to focus on their current demanding management positions and have therefore decided not to seek any further mandates at UBS,” the bank said in a written statement on Tuesday.

Canadian-educated Marchionne was elected to the board in 2007 and appointed independent vice chairman and senior independent director in 2008. He also heads troubled Detroit automaker Chrysler.

The former head of Basel-based Lonza, a biotechnology firm, is a member of UBS’s governance and nominating committee and of the strategy committee.

Voser was elected to UBS’s board in 2005. He is a member of the governance nominating committee and of the strategy committee.

Said Kasper Villiger, chairman of UBS: “With their comprehensive economic and entrepreneurial competence they supported UBS in difficult times and provided significant input to the stabilisation and the successful initiation of the turnaround of our company.”

UBS lost around SFr3.4 billion ($3.3 billion) in the first half of 2009.

The bank said it would announce replacements for Marchionne and Voser at a later date.

swissinfo.ch and agencies