UBS to slash workforce by 20-30% after CS takeover

BLOOMBERG

UBS Group AG will cut its workforce by between 20% and 30% after completing its takeover of Credit Suisse Group AG, slashing as many as 36,000 jobs worldwide,  SonntagsZeitung reported, citing a senior manager at UBS.
As many as 11,000 employees will be laid off in Switzerland, the Swiss newspaper said. The two lenders together employed almost 125,000 people at the end of 2022, with about 30% of the total in Switzerland.
That number of predicted layoffs dwarfs the 9,000 job cuts that Credit Suisse announced before its rescue by UBS. It had been expected that final total of layoffs would reach a multiple of that number given sizable overlap between the two former rivals.
Publicly, UBS has said it will give clarity on job cuts as soon as it can. While it was clear that major layoffs were coming, the lender sees retention of talent as a significant part of the takeover’s execution risk.
Firms such as Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are gearing up to recruit some of the investment bankers and wealth managers likely to be let go. Already, headhunters saw themselves swarmed by Credit Suisse bankers seeking new jobs, as people from more than a dozen firms told Bloomberg.
The emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by its larger Swiss competitor in a $3.3 billion deal was announced by the Swiss government on March 19 after five days of talks brokered by officials.
Years of scandals at Credit Suisse culminated in massive deposit outflows which would have seen it collapse the had action not been taken, according to Switzerland’s finance minister.
|The government resorted to emergency law to push through the deal without having to seek shareholder approval. So while the annual general meetings of the two lenders are expected to hear many angry voices, shareholder impact will be limited.
Important shareholder Norges Bank Investment Management, the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, has announced it will vote against the re-election of several Credit Suisse directors, including chair Axel Lehmann.