Schepers eyes the big picture

Top officials of financial trade associations tend to be lobbyists, lawyers or finance professionals of a certain age looking to cap off their careers.

Top officials of financial trade associations tend to be lobbyists, lawyers or finance professionals of a certain age looking to cap off their careers. So the industry was taken aback last month when 43-year-old debt maven Manfred Schepers, vice chairman of UBS and one of the Euromarket’s best-known personalities, quit the bank to join the Bond Market Association as head of the U.S. group’s London-based international division.

Dutchman Schepers, who’d been taking a breather from UBS, concedes that he made an unusual switch but says that he’s eager “to look at the big picture after working deal-by-deal for 20 years.”

Schepers started out in debt origination at Bankers Trust in 1984 and three years later joined Swiss Bank, which merged with UBS in 1998. From 1992 to 2002 he was first Swiss Bank’s and then UBS’s global head of debt capital markets, becoming the latter’s vice chairman of European fixed income, rates and currency.

He intends to set up committees drawn from BMA member firms and representing various segments of the international bond market -- investment grade, high yield and covered bonds as well as CDOs -- to be sure that diverse views get a fair hearing.

Might the New York-based BMA be encroaching on the turf of Zurich’s powerful International Securities Market Association? Replies Schepers, displaying a trade association executive’s tact: “The major players in the financial markets in Europe are the same as they are in the U.S. They want a global voice that can support their global business.”

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