When deals go bad, there can be a lot of repercussions.

It was not so much of a surprise that Qantas chairperson Margaret Jackson stepped down. After all, she said that those shareholders who did not support the APA buyout plan had a "mental problem." She could have chosen better words, for sure. But now, UBS fund manager Paul Fiani is also out of a job.

It is said that Fiani's neutral stance about the APA/Qantas deal was his undoing. He led Australian equities at the bank, and his team had a 4% controlling stake in Qantas. He was not necessarily opposed to APA taking over Qantas, but he did believe the bid by APA was too low. As such, he put two different divisions of UBS at odds with each other. Andrew Sisson at Balanced Equity Management agreed with him. Between the two of them, that was 10%.

UBS denies that Fiani's position on the deal had anything to do with his quick exit. However, the general understanding seems to be otherwise.

Disagreements over the independent stance taken by UBS fund manager Paul Fiani during the aborted $11 billion private equity bid for Qantas are thought to be behind his sudden departure from the global investment bank.

Mr Fiani, who with rival investment manager Andrew Sisson at Balanced Equity Management helped torpedo the controversial takeover offer, left UBS at the end of last week, just a fortnight after the Qantas bid went down, it emerged yesterday.

(Continue reading this story on Brisbane Times)

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