The Swiss bank UBS will completely integrate its former competitor Credit Suisse after the emergency takeover in the spring. A sale or an IPO of Credit Suisse’s Swiss business is therefore off the table. The decision is linked to the loss of thousands of jobs, as bank boss Sergio Ermotti said on Thursday when the quarterly figures were presented.
In Switzerland alone, around 3,000 jobs are to be saved, if possible through natural departures, it said. Worldwide there should be significantly more. Ermotti did not want to name the number. The media speculated that 30,000 to 35,000 jobs would be lost. At the end of June, the merged bank had almost 120,000 full-time equivalents.
“The Credit Suisse brand and operations will continue pending the migration of clients into our systems, which is expected to be completed in 2025,” the bank said. On the stock exchange, the UBS share price temporarily rose by seven percent to more than CHF 23 in the morning and reached its highest level since the world financial crisis in 2008.
The takeover gave UBS a record profit in the second quarter. Since the purchase price was well below the book value, UBS earned a bottom line of 28.9 billion dollars (26.5 billion euros). The bank had only paid three billion Swiss francs (3.1 billion euros) for the rival. Excluding all the effects of the takeover, UBS would have earned $1.1 billion before taxes.
In the first quarter of this year – i.e. before the takeover – UBS had earned a billion dollars in the same quarter of the previous year 1.65 billion dollars.
After many scandals, Credit Suisse had been in an existential crisis since autumn 2022. She had lost the trust of customers. They withdrew large amounts of money. In mid-March, the Swiss government therefore arranged for the takeover by UBS. She wanted to prevent a major banking crisis from developing in a nervous market environment after the collapse of the American Silicon Valley Bank. The takeover was completed in June.
UBS collected more money from clients in the second quarter. In wealth management, the Global Wealth Management division, it claims to have reported the highest net new money inflow in a second quarter in more than ten years, at $16 billion. Overall, the UBS banking group managed assets of a good 5.5 trillion dollars at the end of June. At the end of March – before the takeover of Credit Suisse – it was almost 4.2 trillion.
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