UBS Cuts 700 Jobs

Swiss bankers are the first to go in the Swiss bank’s current round of cuts. UBS has started cutting jobs as part of its current round of cost-savings measures, with around 700 employees in Switzerland affected.

Most of the cuts will be in the corporate center although 200 jobs will go in wealth management and UBS Switzerland. These are in addition to the roughly 125 jobs UBS was going to get rid of before the Covid-19 pandemic put those plans on ice

UBS CEO Ralph Hamers announced a $1 billion cost-savings target during first-quarter results last month. UBS’s cuts are aimed at the jobs expected to become redundant as a result of its ongoing digitalization processes. finews.com reported on the plans in April. They are expected to be wide-ranging and take out 3,000 jobs in total.

UBS has not confirmed the figure but it is realistic in view of the savings targets and the bank’s cost structures. It also announced that restructuring costs would total $300 million in the second quarter, most of which were in the scope of the cuts originally announced last year.

According to Bloomberg, around a dozen managing directors as well as more junior bankers in the advisory and trading business were recently let go. In wealth management, about five managing directors and several executive directors were impacted. In the investment bank, most of those cuts were those responsible for wealth management clients.

CEO Hamers said his current efforts are aimed at implementing and executing the transformation and digitalization strategy, which is expected to take about three years.