Jerker Johansson started out life at a bank that specialises in risk management, so it is fitting that the Swedish executive has ended up at UBS - the European bank that has demonstrated less skill in risk management than any other during the credit crisis.

As a graduate trainee at Bankers Trust in New York, Mr Johansson would have been trained in the art of risk, although Bankers Trust itself then ran into big problems in 1994 - after Mr Johansson had departed. Having ridden high during the trading boom, specialising in the nascent derivatives business, the bank suffered severe damage to its reputation when some complex derivative transactions caused large losses for several big clients.

Now Mr Johannson must use those skills to do his best to keep UBS’s clients reassured that the bank is through the worst of the credit crisis, after having written off more than €37 billion (£29 billion) of mortgage and credit losses. UBS poached Mr Johansson to be its chairman and chief executive of global investment banking in February this year after it ousted Huw Jenkins, the former chief, in the wake of heavy losses connected to the US sub-prime meltdown. It was a surprise appointment: bookies made him a rank outsider.

Mr Johansson, 51, has a long history as an equities banker, a part of the world that UBS will want to focus on after some disastrous forays on the fixed income and credit side. He worked at Morgan Stanley for 22 years and rose as high as global head of institutional equities before being named vice-chairman for Europe as part of a management shake-up. The one notable gap on his CV is advisory, although with M&A in the doldrums that will give him some breathing space.

When he joined UBS, one of his top priorities was - and still is – to restore the battered morale in its investment banking division, That will be a much harder task now, given that just over half, about 2,600, of the cuts will come in his back yard. But it’s a job that friends who know him say he is well able to take on.

Mr Johansson, a skiing and sailing fan, is married with four daughters.

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