The sale of Banco Pactual last week showed UBS’s new chief executive Oswarld Grübel is not afraid to sacrifice some of the bank’s crown jewels to turn the Swiss bank around. The departure today of investment banking head Jerker Johansson is the clearest sign yet of his new strategy.

Johansson's exit just over a year after joining from Morgan Stanley to run the division gives a clear mandate to his successors Carsten Kengeter and Alex Wilmott-Sitwell that Grübel wants a radical and ruthless restructuring of the investment banking business.