* UniCredit nomination committee recommends Mustier to board
* Mustier used to be top banker at Societe Generale
* UniCredit board to formally appoint Mustier this week
* Mustier had overseen rogue trader Jerome Kerviel
(Adds details, background)
By Gianluca Semeraro
MILAN, Feb 8 (Reuters) - UniCredit is poised to announce on Thursday that Jean-Pierre Mustier will be its new investment banking chief, sources close to the decision said.
The appointment of the former top banker at Societe Generale ends a three month power vacuum after Sergio Ermotti quit following the ousting of former CEO Alessandro Profumo.
UniCredit's nomination committee, which met earlier on Tuesday, recommended Mustier as the man to replace Ermotti.
"The nomination committee has come up with a candidate to propose to the board," one of the sources told Reuters, adding that the candidate was Mustier. A second source close to the situation said the board of Italy's largest bank will meet on Thursday Feb. 10 to appoint the new head of its corporate and investment banking unit, which generates almost two thirds of UniCredit's profits.
The appointment of a new investment banking head is a key step in defining the strategy of new CEO Federico Ghizzoni, who used to run the bank's operations in eastern Europe before rising to the top job. Fifty-year-old Mustier, a graduate of the French elite 'grande ecole' system, began his career at Societe Generale in 1987 at the options division and quit in 2009 after having worked in North America, Asia and London.
During his time as head of investment banking of Societe Generale, Mustier was the boss of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, who was sentenced in October to three years in prison for his role in a trading scandal, and ordered to repay the bank 4.9 billion euros.
During Mustier's tenure the investment banking division doubled its annual profits to more than 2 billion euros.
He had been tipped to head the bank as chairman and chief executive, but the Kerviel scandal put paid to that.
Last Tuesday sources told Reuters that Mustier was the frontrunner to head the unit at UniCredit.
Ermotti, a close ally of charismatic ex-CEO Profumo, is leaving UniCredit to head the Europe, Middle East and Africa unit at Switzerland's biggest bank UBS.
(Writing by Lisa Jucca; Additional reporting by Lionel Laurent in Paris; Editing by Will Waterman and Elaine Hardcastle)