The financial district of London is losing slowly but surely. For UBS workers it was
Beer instead of Bonds.
UBS workers locked out
31.10.2012
Dozens of traders at UBS's offices in London learned in the worst way that they had lost their jobs, when they turned up to work to find out that their security passes no longer worked at the turnstile.
The traders - many of them from the Swiss banking giant's fixed income department - soon discovered they had been put on two weeks special leave as part of UBS's plans to cut 10,000 staff in a retreat from fixed income.
As more turned up for work, queues began to form at the bank's doors until some took refuge instead in a nearby pub.
"I came into the office at twenty to seven, my pass didn't work so a beefy bouncer took me to the lift, where a different beefy bouncer was waiting for me," said one trader in the Railway Tavern, in the heart of the City of London financial district.
"I came straight here. Well not straight here because it only opened at 8am - I went ... for a coffee and breakfast (first)," he said.
Inside the pub, more than 20 UBS traders stood around drinking pints of lager and cheered as more arrived.
They said they had been given letters putting them on paid leave until further notice. But the traders have not been formally let go or even officially put at risk of redundancy.
The letters mark the start of a consultation over jobs at UBS related to its restructuring in fixed income.
UBS declined to comment.
Twitter was buzzing with comments from shocked staff Tuesday morning, including the old joke that UBS stands for "U've Been Sacked", which circulated in 1998 after the bank fired hundreds of staff following the merger of the two big Swiss banks which formed today's UBS.
A security pass that no longer works is often the first sign for a banker that all may not be well with his job. Investment banks do this to try to stop sensitive data leaving along with staff.
The UBS traders turned away on Tuesday were either handed their belongings in plastic bags, or had to call colleagues inside the bank to bring down their possessions.
Those affected came from a range of teams, they said.
"It was like salami slicing," said one young trader.
Some said they were shocked by the scale of UBS's cuts, saying they had not believed 10,000 jobs would go.
Most were still wearing their work suits, though one had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and returned to spend the day with colleagues.
Some were philosophical about the cuts.
"It's the right decision, even though it's horrible for me," another trader said. "The City (of London) is changing - and this is part of that.
"I don't know what I'm going to do ... we'll see."
REFOCUSING
UBS is returning to its private banking roots as it adapts to tough capital rules that make it harder to turn a profit from trading.
Zurich-based UBS will focus on wealth management and a smaller investment bank, ditching much of the trading business that ran up US$50 billion (NZ$60b) in losses in the financial crisis.
Chief executive Sergio Ermotti, a former Merrill Lynch and UniCredit banker, is leading the three-year overhaul aimed at saving 3.4 billion Swiss francs, on top of cuts of 2b francs.
Former investment bank co-head Carsten Kengeter will lead the isolation and winding down of its fixed-income activities.
The remaining investment bank - handling equities, foreign exchange trading, corporate advice, and precious metals trading - will be run by Andrea Orcel, a recent Ermotti hire from Bank of America who co-ran the unit with Kengeter until Tuesday.
"This decision has been hard but it is necessary to create a UBS that is fit for the future," Ermotti said. "The business model we are creating will be unique in the banking industry."
The measures translate to a 15 per cent staff cut, taking UBS's overall staff to 54,000, from 63,745 now, already down from a 2007 peak of 83,500 as banks have shed tens of thousands of jobs globally since the financial crisis of 2008.
Of the job cuts, 2000 will be front-office investment banking staff, the revenue generators. Cuts among support staff will bring the layoffs to above 5000 in the securities unit alone, Ermotti said in Zurich.
About 2500 positions will go in Switzerland, slightly more than that in the United States, and the rest in Britain, Ermotti said.
A smaller investment bank will leave UBS focused on its private bank, which looks after the affairs of the wealthy. With 1.6 trillion francs in assets, it is the second-largest operation of its kind in the world after Bank of America.
"This is a transformational change for UBS, which investors wanted to happen for a long time," said Kepler Capital Markets analyst Dirk Becker. "After the completion of this downsizing UBS is an attractive investment case, but we still believe the execution risk must not be underestimated."
UBS, which took a government bailout in 2008 after more than US$50b in mortgage losses, is effectively admitting the failure of an attempt to crack the fixed-income big league launched a decade ago by former chairman Marcel Ospel.
The bank suffered a US$2.3b hit last year blamed on trader Kweku Adoboli, now on trial on charges of fraud and false accounting.
Deutsche Bank said on Tuesday it hopes to benefit from the UBS cuts as its investment bank delivered record third-quarter sales and trading revenue.
Credit Suisse said last week it was also cutting more costs to boost its profits and capital but did not announce the same kind of radical restructuring as UBS.
RETREAT
The overhaul represents a retreat to strengths in advisory stemming from UBS's purchase of Warburg, a British merchant bank, in 1995.
The bank aims to pay out more than 50 per cent of profits to shareholders from 2015, after paying its first post-crisis dividend last year, a modest 0.10 francs a share. It has put away funds in the third quarter for an unspecified dividend this year, financial chief Tom Naratil said.
The costs related to the investment banking split will also lead to a fourth-quarter and full-year loss, when taken together with charges on the bank's own debt, UBS said.
The private bank also faces challenges, with profits falling as Swiss banking secrecy is weakened as foreign governments push to recoup tax on undeclared funds in offshore accounts.
However, the unit secured 7.b francs in net new money from clients in the third quarter, which represents the highest result in a third quarter - typically a slow one for the business due to summer holidays - in five years.
Vontobel analyst Teresa Nielsen said the focus on wealth management should boost that business as UBS will be considered safer by clients and an employer of choice for their advisers.
"We expect UBS to continue to show increasing strength in its wealth management as its reputation continues to improve, potentially even taking market share from Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and other competitors," she said.
UBS swung to a third-quarter net loss of 2.2b francs, hit by the restructuring charges and 863 million francs written off the value of its own debt. Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a net profit of 457m francs.
UBS is aiming to reduce risk-weighted assets to below 200b francs by the end of 2017, from 301b currently. Of this the investment bank will account for roughly 70b francs, less than half of what it accounts for today.
UBS workers locked out - world - business | Stuff.co.nz
