Some 50 investment bankers have left UBS' U.S. operation since 2009 in an exodus of high-level talent that has been well documented by the financial press. Among the most recent defectors are Cary Kochman, who just this month jumped to Citigroup Inc. as head of North American mergers and acquisitions, and Jim Glerum, who accompanied Kochman to Citi as chairman of North American regional banking.

But UBS is also rebuilding its investment bank and has added 41 bankers to its United States ranks since the beginning of the year. Overseeing the effort is vice chairman Aryeh Bourkoff, who was named head of investment banking for the Americas in March.

Based in New York, Bourkoff, 39, joined UBS from CIBC World Markets Corp. in 1999, where he was executive director of high-yield research and a senior telecom and cable TV analyst. He covered the media and communications industries for UBS for eight years but switched to investment banking in 2007. Two years later he was named joint global head of technology, media and telecommunications, or TM&T, where his deals included advising Comcast Corp. on its $37 billion purchase of a controlling stake in NBC Universal Inc. in January and representing the creditor group in Charter Communications Inc.'s bankruptcy. But in addition to his dealmaking prowess, Bourkoff also showed a penchant for poaching top talent to the technology and media group, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Mark Zanoli in July 2010.

That skill is proving particularly valuable today as UBS looks to Bourkoff to rebuild some of its depleted banking teams. In May, Bourkoff made his first notable hire in his new role, recruiting Thomas Langford, a 17-year veteran of Morgan Stanley, as global head of energy investment banking in Houston. Langford, who starts in August, will patch up the gaping hole left by the late 2010 departure of UBS' lead energy banker, Steve Trauber, to Citigroup, along with direct reports Jerry Schretter and Sam Pitts. Bourkoff worked quickly to rebuild the team under Langford, tapping Jane Dabney and Steven Escaler, also from Morgan Stanley, as executive directors in the energy group.

Other Bourkoff hires include Morgan Stanley's Adam Frisch as a managing director in TM&T; Jeffrey Berson of Oppenheimer & Co., also in TM&T; and RBC Capital Markets' Marc Daniel as U.S. head of exclusive sales covering midmarket M&A. The Swiss bank's most recent recruit is Keith Lord, who joined in early June as a managing director in power and utilities from Evercore Partners Inc., where he was a senior adviser in the global power group.

In addition to his banking career, Bourkoff has produced a film, "The Last Jews of Libya," a documentary directed by his mother, Vivienne Roumani-Denn, about the disappearance of the Libyan Jewish community in the 1940s. First shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007, it made its television debut later that year on the Sundance Channel.

In a wide-ranging conversation with The Deal magazine's Michael Rudnick, Bourkoff discussed his strategy for recruiting dealmakers and cultivating internal talent, and his experience in the film business.

The Deal magazine: What challenges do you face in trying to attract high-level bankers during a period of signifi­cant attrition?

Aryeh Bourkoff: Really, it's a twofold challenge. One is to retain our people here that have been loyal and that we believe will be loyal -- those that are highly productive around many of our core areas and are culturally where we want to be. With regard to recruitment, it's important to hire when you have a strategic hole to fill and when you can find the right people to fill that hole.

We've seen more departures than we'd like, but we were in need of a lot of change, so we are taking advantage of this opportunity to make things right. What we are prioritizing is loyalty to the firm and to each other. We are hiring productive bankers in core areas, but my first loyalty is with existing people. It's important to hire when you have a strategic hole to fill, but that being said, we won't make hires out of desperation.

What is UBS doing differently to retain its best talent?

Previously, you could say that we were a bank of talented bankers, but out for ourselves, not each other. That is not the culture we are instilling today. It's best for our clients if we work together as a team and promote a culture of true collaboration -- meaning we abandon the traditional silo approach to banking and client relationships, and work across teams and regions to deliver the best possible client service.

This partnership culture is also how we are attracting talent and motivating our existing teams. We are part of something special: Rebuilding and working our way up the league tables is a challenge, but we are in it to win it. I find that when you challenge people to succeed and give them the strategy and vision to see that end result, they rise to the challenge. There is a real exuberance and enthusiasm around the Americas today about being on a winning team when expectations are low -- externally they are low, but internally our expectations are very high. There is just an exhilarating change in the makeup of our people.

Are you expanding any industry groups in particular?

We are investing in the Americas more than other regions right now. And within the Americas, we have been investing and continue to invest in the energy team, which we feel is a dynamic industry that has a strong legacy at UBS. We lost Steve Trauber last year to Citi. Our No. 1 goal when I first took on this role was to solve the energy hire, and we wanted to do it differently, meaning we wanted to apply a broader coverage model than we had before, covering more subsectors within the energy space.

With the new leadership under Tom Langford, who has a clear mandate to build the team, we have already hired two executive directors from his former team at Morgan Stanley, who, combined with our existing talent in Houston, will form the next generation of leadership for UBS' energy banking efforts.

Another area of investment is the technology group, which until a couple of years ago was a separate group, not part of media and telecom. When I was running media, we merged telecom and media together, and then we eventually merged technology into that group. We merged the groups because we think media and technology trends are converging. The technology group had been based in Los Angeles -- there were a lot of flaws in that strategy, and we've changed it. Los Angeles may be a good base for West Coast media, but for technology, it's pretty clear that the base is San Francisco and the Silicon Valley -- that's where the companies are based, that's where we should be based.

So we changed that, and we hired Mark Zanoli from J.P. Morgan, who ­really fits into our culture well. He's been a banker for 17 years in the Valley. He was at H&Q before J.P. Morgan, so he had a little bit of a boutique mindset as well as the big-capital mindset from J.P. Morgan. He's charged with building the tech team in San Francisco. We are still building and have a mandate to continue to hire in tech.

Are you focused on recruiting external talent, or is your emphasis on cultivating talent from within?

We are doing both. The weighting of our talent development is internal versus external, meaning that we will succeed if our internal talent becomes our leaders and producers. The external hires are tactical additions to our fleet of talent and bankers, not wholesale changes.

We are going to invest in the people that know the culture, know the system and know how to perform, and give them an opportunity to produce what they've been working towards for a long time. But we are also going to add and supplement those people with some hires that fill a need in terms of client coverage in product areas, sector areas and the right regions.

You may notice that the hires we are making are really not transformative in nature, in which we are buying blocks of people. That's not what we do. We are looking for individuals to come into our core sectors of investment like technology, energy and other areas that fit into the team and the culture and can help us win in front of clients. I would say that the talent development is more of a long-term strategy, whereas the [talent] acquisition strategy is year to year, for which we have a plan that we are working through.

What does the hiring market look like now? Where is the talent coming from?

This being a time of change on Wall Street following the financial crisis, a lot of investment bankers and talented producers at any firm, whether it's a top-tier firm, a midtier firm or a boutique, are looking for a vision to hang their hat on. We are not targeting any individual firm by any stretch; our hiring has been pretty broad-based. We've hired from Oppenheimer, Morgan Stanley, boutiques, J.P. Morgan, Citi -- it's not just about one set of people from one firm. It's really about the people individually and the skill sets and client relationships they have.

Do you find that your time is largely
devoted to managerial tasks such as
recruiting these days, or are you still
able to focus on deals and clients?

I really enjoy the relationship side of the business on the client side, and I will never stop doing deals. I'm very active in live deals now and looking to bring in new transactions. I have a vested interest in not only the deals business as a revenue generator, but in seeing the continued development of the TM&T industry, which is at its most dynamic point in the confluence of media and technology.

A lot of deals are happening that are transformative in nature, and they are exciting to be a part of. Similarly, I'm very excited about the relationship building with my partners internally. The short answer is, I have to balance internal activities driving the Americas banking franchise forward and dealmaking -- the challenge is trying to figure out the exact, right, healthy balance.

The Swiss regulatory regime calls for banks to hold relatively high levels of capital. Because of this, UBS presumably does not have the same flexibility to borrow against its balance sheet as some of its bigger U.S. rivals. How do you overcome this?

We are not a commercial bank, we are an investment bank, so we are never going to have the capital that a commercial bank has to offer. A client should not assume that we are going to be in every credit profile. However, we do have a sufficient balance sheet, and we have one of the best, if not the best, Tier 1 capital ratio of any bank.

We have a loan book that is very, very big for investment banks. In some cases, for those clients that we believe are our partners, we are their No. 1 capital driver. We provide financing on acquisitions, and we can be very aggressive with terms and our capital.

Warner Music is a good example -- that deal was split between us and Credit Suisse -- there were no commercial banks on that deal. [UBS and Credit Suisse advised and provided financing to Access Industries Holdings LLC on its May $3.3 billion acquisition of Warner Music Group Corp.] We feel that we have enough capital to do business with our clients as an investment banking franchise, and I've never felt a constraint around capital with our clients.

You made the switch from research analyst to banker. What has that been like?

I was very skeptical about whether it would actually work because there were a lot more seasoned bankers than I. I needed to have a differentiated strategy in providing advice worthwhile to clients. What I found was, more than anything, clients wanted to talk about stock price -- what drives the stock from today to the future. Stock price measurement is based on future earnings and future developments, not current developments.

I would have active debates with clients on what kind of things they can do to position themselves to be better in the future, whether it be allocating capital, looking at their capital structures, looking at their geographic footprint or looking at their portfolio of assets. And because of my training as an analyst in front of investors of all shapes and sizes -- hedge funds, debt, equity -- I felt that I had a good backdrop to provide this type of advice to clients.

Most investment bankers that I've encountered haven't spent enough time on the investment side of the community to understand what really drives the stock, which is what you are advising the company on ultimately.

You produced your mother's film, "The Last Jews of Libya." How did that come about?

I'm a first-generation American, and I have children and would like them to understand what's important in life beyond just ambition. I'd like them to understand where they've come from and what it took to get to this country. When I felt that I didn't fully appreciate my mother's life story and where she came from in Libya, I felt the obligation to connect the generations -- from my mother and my grandmother to my children.

That was a passion project -- I didn't mean for it to be at a film festival or on television, and it has obviously gained more resonance with what is going on in Libya today. It was about a family story intertwined with a period in Libya that was not necessarily well understood.