One of the biggest banks in the world wants the president’s favorite banker muzzled.
The banker, Robert Wolf, a top UBS executive in New York, is among President Barack Obama’s leading fundraisers, amassing more than $500,000 for his re-election so far this year.
A regular presence at big campaign fundraisers, Wolf, 50, golfs and vacations with Obama and is known for e-mailing friends photos of himself with the president.
While such a close relationship might have been envied by other bankers in 2008, when much of Wall Street was infatuated with Obama and donated heavily to his presidential bid, it has been making other UBS executives uneasy of late.
The president’s relationship with financial executives has been decidedly chilly after some critical comments about bankers and the administration’s push on financial regulation.
With media reports pointing out that one of the bank’s top executives is also one of the Obama campaign’s top bundlers — a word that one UBS executive said “makes people’s hair stand on end” inside the bank — the Swiss banking giant has decided to take an unusual step.
The bank’s powerful group executive board in Zurich recently presented Wolf with an edict directing him to report all his media inquiries to the firm’s press office. Since then, most of the requests to speak to Wolf have been rejected, according to people briefed on the situation, resulting in a much dimmer limelight for Wolf.
The move to muzzle Wolf is unlikely on its own to hinder his ability to raise money, even if he may have to do it more quietly than before. Obama is raising far less on Wall Street than he did in 2008, and Mitt Romney is enlisting a number of big donors there.
Yet the contretemps within UBS may be more about office politics than national politics. After a series of setbacks, including a $2 billion loss blamed on a rogue trader in London, the bank is struggling to turn itself around.
Several executives, notably Robert McCann, have been jockeying for a bigger role in running the bank. McCann was elevated recently, while Wolf lost some responsibilities.
McCann, 54, who is chief executive of UBS in the Americas, and Wolf, who is chairman of the Americas, do not get along, according to people inside the bank.
Largely through his relationship with the president, Wolf has become the public face of UBS in the United States, even though McCann, a former Merrill Lynch executive, outranks him.
“This stuff is right out of the movie ‘Mean Girls,’ but it involves grown men,” said one person with knowledge of the bickering who declined to be identified.
