Tom Naratil

In July[9] 1983 Naratil joined the American brokerage firm Paine Webber Jackson & Curtis[2] through its corporate intern program. He became a trading assistant in the firm’s taxed fixed income (TFI) unit in January 1985, and the unit later appointed him manager of risk, origination, sales, and marketing. From 1987 to 1993 Naratil co-managed the TFI unit’s government and federal agency trading desk, and in 1994[9] he became PaineWebber's TFI director.[12] The Swiss bank UBS acquired PaineWebber in 2000,[2] renaming it UBS PaineWebber in 2001.[13] Initially appointed director of UBS PaineWebber’s investment products group, in 2002 the division appointed him director of its transactions products group[9] and director of banking and transactional solutions.[5] In 2003 UBS PaineWebber was renamed UBS Wealth Management USA.[14]

UBS selected Naratil as its global head of market strategy and development in 2005. In that role, he was responsible for "the sales, marketing and trading of all taxable debt, convertible securities and preferred stock" of UBS.[9] In 2007 he was named UBS's global head of marketing, segment and client development. During the financial crisis of 2008, he served as head of UBS’s Auction Rate Securities Solutions Group.[5]

In 2009[8] Naratil was appointed chief financial officer (CFO) and chief risk officer (CRO) of UBS Wealth Management Americas,[2] a role he held until 2011.[3][8] In May 2011 he began serving as UBS’s global CFO, moving from the United States to Zurich, Switzerland to succeed John Cryan[2] as both CFO and a member of UBS's Group Executive Board,[15] which Naratil joined on June 1, 2011. On January 1,[9] 2014, he was named UBS’s chief operating officer (COO) in addition to his CFO responsibilities. He retained both his COO and CFO roles until the end of 2015.[9]

Naratil succeeded Robert McCann as president of both UBS Wealth Management Americas and UBS Americas on January 1, 2016,[3] tasked by UBS executives with "extending the brokerage’s profit beyond roughly $1 billion annually."[8] The Wall Street Journal wrote that Naratil was expected to continue the unit’s focus on "primarily serving clients who have millions of dollars to invest."[3] In May 2016[16] Naratil created an alliance with the financial technology company SigFig to create fintech products for UBS, among them a digital platform to support his financial advisors.[7]

Naratil led a reorganization at UBS’s US wealth management arm in June 2016[6] to "push decision-making authority down to the firm’s 208 local managers," giving managers control of their team structures, allocation of marketing and event resources, and pricing for services and products.[7] The reorganization involved cutting recruitment of US advisors by 40 percent annually, as well as thinning management ranks.[6] Around 60 senior executives and support staff "sandwiched between upper management and the local level" were redeployed or cut, with Naratil eliminating 20 percent of the managing directors and 10% of the executive directors working from UBS Americas’ home office. With the funds saved from reducing overhead, Naratil built "a SWAT team of roving experts," including specialist-lending and technology experts, to work with local advisors.[7] Also as part of the restructuring, he oversaw a simplification of the arm’s compensation plan. Taking effect in 2017, Naratil said no advisor would get less cash under the plan,[6] which left base pay levels for advisors unchanged.[8] Beyond increasing pay to select advisors[6] and pay to advisors with the most business, the changes also offered incentives for working in teams, bringing in new business, and selling client books within the firm upon retiring.[7] "Following UBS's lead," Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley also announced plans in 2017 to change their recruitment and compensation plans.[17]

In January 2018, Naratil was appointed CEO of UBS Americas Holding LLC.[4]

In February 2018, became co-president of Global Wealth Management of UBS Group AG and UBS AG alongside Martin Blessing.[4][18] Iqbal Khan succeeded Blessing, becoming Naratil’s co-president, on October 1, 2019.[19]

Interviewed by Bloomberg in late March 2020, Naratil observed that, during the coronavirus pandemic, “The biggest difference between now and 2008 is that the banks are a source of strength rather than the source of the problem”.[20]