Full UBS armoury at disposal of Orcel UBS is gearing up to use its balance sheet heft to back its new co-head of investment banking as the Swiss group steps up efforts to revive its status in the market. Sergio Ermotti, chief executive, last week hired Andrea Orcel - a 20-year veteran of Bank of America Merrill Lynch - to jointly run UBS's investment banking operations in an early sign of the direction of his strategic ambition. According to people close to the chief executive, Mr Ermotti is committed to backing the client relationships that Mr Orcel will bring with funding commitments on a par with those made available by BofA. We need to take risk. We will have the same kind of risk appetite as BofA," one banker said. The news will come as a surprise to those who have written off UBS as a force in European investment banking after a rogue trading scandal last year and political pressure in Switzerland for the bank to retrench. In the €7.5bn rights issue for UniCredit, which BofA led - a deal Mr Orcel described as the "scariest of my career" - BofA stunned rivals with its preparedness to take on such a risk amid a volatile eurozone financial environment. It has emerged that some of BofA's biggest clients in Europe are set to desert the bank and are gearing up to follow Mr Orcel to UBS. Both Santander and UniCredit, two clients with which Mr Orcel has close longstanding relationships, are preparing to shift business from Merrill to UBS, the Financial Times has learnt. Mr Orcel is seen as one of the best-connected advisory bankers in Europe thanks to close relationships with chief executives and other top executives. Intesa Sanpaolo and Monte dei Paschi di Siena in Italy, as well as VTB and Oleg Deripaska in Russia, are among his other clients. UBS's hiring of the man dubbed the "George Clooney of banking" and its commitment to support clients with financing emphasises the shift the Swiss group is looking to make at its investment bank as it retreats from certain activities, particularly in fixed income. But insiders say it would be wrong to view the strategy as new, particularly in Mr Orcel's specialist area of financial institutions. UBS led Deutsche Bank's €10bn rights issue 18 months ago and has underwritten fundraisings that include the UniCredit cash call and others at Commerzbank, BBVA, Santander and Bank of Ireland.