NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Mark Sutton, who climbed from trainee at a small Texas brokerage firm to run the U.S. retail brokerage unit of UBS AG (UBS) over a 26- year career, is leaving at year's end.

"I've spent a lot of time on airplanes in the last 10 years," said Sutton, 52, from his home in Austin, Texas. He said he wants to spend more time with his family, having commuted from the U.S. group's offices in New York and New Jersey. Though he said he has no specific plans, he is known to have been involved in some investment ventures with his former boss, Joseph Grano.

Robert Wolf, 44, a former chief operating officer of UBS's investment-banking businesses in the U.S., is replacing Sutton in his most recent position as chairman and chief executive of UBS Americas. Wolf will report to Huw Jenkins, head of the worldwide investment bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Investment Bank.

Sutton spent most of his career managing brokers as the business evolved from charging commissions for selling stocks and bonds to small investors to gathering assets from very wealthy individuals and families in return for fees. He was president and chief operating officer of UBS's wealth-management division from 2002 to 2004, a unit comprised primarily of the former PaineWebber Group that the bank bought in 2000.

He became the division's chairman and chief executive in 2004 and one year later - when Marten Hoekstra took the helm - gave up operating duties for the UBS Americas, where he traveled worldwide to consult on strategy.

UBS, with over 8,000 brokers in the U.S., has been aggressively expanding in an attempt to compete with larger competitors Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER) and Citigroup Inc.'s (C) Smith Barney. In August it bought the 800-person brokerage unit of Piper Jaffray Cos. (PJC) and in September agreed to buy McDonald Investments, a smaller brokerage unit of KeyCorp (KEY), the Cleveland-based bank company.

"Scale does matter," said Sutton, who expects brokerage consolidation to continue.

Sutton began his career at Rotan Mosle, a Texas broker subsequently acquired by PaineWebber, and also has held senior brokerage and asset-management positions at Kidder Peabody, another firm bought by PaineWebber.

-By Jed Horowitz, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4047; jed.horowitz@dowjones.com

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  11-09-06 1421ET
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