UBS: Profile and Culture

Corporation Overview:

UBS is a Swiss bank founded about 200 years ago in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland. The bank is still officially headquartered in Switzerland, however the investment banking operations are largely run from London (based in the City near Liverpool Street), New York and other financial centers.

UBS is considered to be part of the Bulge Bracket investment banks, and is split is 4 big divisions: UBS Investment Bank (including M&A and Sales and Trading), Global Asset Management (UBS is the 2nd largest asset manager in the world), Wealth Management, and UBS Swiss Bank, which is the retail banking part of the bank.

Because the UBS is a Swiss bank with a strong wealth management business, it is often compared to Credit Suisse. In fact, its current CEO is the former CEO of Credit Suisse, and, similarly to Credit Suisse, UBS grew by acquiring other financial institutions especially in the US, including the asset manager Paine Webber in November 2000, and investment banks Kidder Peabody, SG Warburg and Dillon, Read in 1995.

UBS only really came to prominence when John Costas (a former bond trader at Credit Suisse) became CEO in 1998 and also when Ken Moelis (an investment banker that has now set up his own boutique called Moelis) started to build up the M&A franchise. Nevertheless, UBS is one of the bank that suffered most during the financial crisis and had the largest total mortgage related losses ($37billion). The bank had to issue capital to stay afloat (mostly from the Singapore government and Middle East investors) and undergo major cost cutting, and overall rankings in its investment banking business dropped quite significantly.

Oswald Gruebel is the CEO (he was the CEO of Credit Suisse between 2003-2007), and the Head of Investment Banking is Carsten Kengeter who was previously at Goldman Sachs.

Strengths and Rankings

Strengths

> Thanks to its acquisitions and strong growth over the past 15 years, UBS has established itself as a global bulge bracket bank. The bank has extremely strong positions in Asia and is has strong recognition in the US and Europe.

> UBS has a very strong equity platform: the bank has a very strong IPO pipeline (especially in Asia) and it reputed for the quality of its research

> The Private Bank is works hand in hand with the Investment Bank, which means more proprietary deal flow and more sell side mandates

> In general, a more laid back culture compared to many other Bulge Brackets

League Tables 2010

Global M&A: #8
European M&A: #7
US M&A: #9
Asia-Pacific M&A: #2