casualties of presidential friendships

Obama’s ‘Banker BFF’ Is Now Obama’s ‘Self-Employed Consultant BFF’

Robert
Robert Wolf of 32 Advisors Photo: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty

Robert Wolf, an executive at UBS who has raised a lot of money for President Obama, is now one of those small-business owners the president is always talking about.

Wolf, who was dubbed President Obama’s “BFF (best friend in finance),” is leaving the Swiss bank to form his own advisory and consulting firm.

Wolf is hanging his own shingle just a month after the Times reported that he had angered his bosses at UBS by golfing and going on vacation with the president. UBS’s efforts to lower Wolf’s profile, which included curtailing his public appearances and forcing him to route all interview requests through the firm’s press office, were reportedly related to Wolf’s long-standing feud with Robert McCann, the bank’s CEO in the Americas.

This stuff is right out of the movie ‘Mean Girls’ but it involves grown men,” one UBS insider told the Times of the feud.

Wolf’s new firm, which already has a bare-bones website, will be called 32 Advisors, after Wolf’s football jersey number on the Penn football team. UBS will be among the clients of 32 Advisors, which will also include “public and private companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, money managers, governments and other institutions.”

I am delighted that UBS will be a client of mine where I will focus on providing client advice and solutions,” Wolf wrote in an e-mail to friends and colleagues this afternoon. “I look forward to catching up with you soon.”

Obama’s ‘Banker BFF’ Leaves UBS