Alvarez & Marsal hires two wealth management experts

Alvarez & Marsal has hired two seasoned wealth management experts in the US, both have a long history with UBS. The new hires, Craig Walling who joins as Managing Director and Kevin Ferguson as Senior Director, bolster the wealth management transformation capacity of the firm's Financial Industry Advisory Services group.

Craig Walling has held a number of senior positions across North America, the US and Asia. Walling joins Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) from UBS, where, in his latest role for the bank, he was the Chairman & CEO of its UBS Trust Company N.A subsidiary. Throughout his work at UBS, which started in 2009, Walling has transformed the various banks’ businesses units in which he was set to work, back to profitability and in full compliance with new regulatory conditions, through remediation, restructuring and repurposing. Previously, Walling worked for Citibank from 1976 until 2000, in his last role as Managing Director of its Citibank Global Consumer business, before a brief stint as the President of ZonaFinanciera.com, a joint venture involving Citibank.

Walling holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Cincinnati and holds FINRA Series 24, 7, licenses.

Prior to starting at A&M, Kevin Ferguson served as a Management Consultant at The Enosys Group since 2014. Previously he worked for UBS since 1998. Ferguson held roles of increasing superiority at the bank, leaving the bank from the role of Managing Director of Operations and Head of Strategic Projects. Ferguson was responsible for planning, development and execution of strategy for its UBS Wealth Management business. Previous employers include the Swiss Bank Corporation, where he worked between 1990 and 1998, leaving as its Director of Operations, and First Boston Corporation where he worked in International Operations.

Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance from St. John's University and holds FINRA Series 24, 7, licenses.

The hires will provide A&M Financial Industry Advisory Services group’s clients with expertise in wealth management organisational transformation, as the winds of change sweeps across the wealth management banking segment. Traditional business models are under threat from disruptive technologies and business models, ranging from robotic wealth managers to digital FinTech and cross-channel competitors. The new hires, leveraging their decades of combined experience, provide independent support for clients transforming their wealth management business models to reflect changing, and challenging, market conditions. Walling joins as a Managing Director and Ferguson joins as a Senior Director, both situated in New York.

“New Department of Labour regulations, technological advancements and evolving pricing practices are all having a major impact on banks, brokers and trust companies,” says Douglas Lambert, a Managing Director and Co-CEO of the firm’s US Financial Industry Advisory Services practice. “As these institutions work to absorb and understand these issues, Craig’s and Kevin’s deep combined knowledge of the newly published regulations and their strong backgrounds in pricing further enhances our ability to meet clients’ changing needs.”

According to a recent study by BCG, global private financial wealth is set to reach $222.1 trillion in 2019, up from $164.3 trillion in 2014. Among one of the fastest growing regions is the GCC, with another study, by Strategy&, showing that wealth has in recent years surged to $2.2 trillion.