‘UBS doesn’t plan to buy US firms, Credit Suisse’

Bloomberg

UBS Group AG doesn’t plan acquisitions in the US “in the foreseeable future” and has no intention to buy Credit Suisse Group AG, the bank’s chairman Colm Kelleher told Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
UBS hasn’t yet realised its full potential in the US, Kelleher said in an interview. “We need to get our wealth management business up and running and improve our margins there,” he said.
The Swiss lender’s US strategy is in flux after longtime Americas chief Tom Naratil retired, leaving Iqbal Khan to take on global leadership of the wealth management business. The bank also backed away from acquiring robo-adviser Wealthfront, a deal that was meant to widen its reach to the lower rungs of the wealthy. Instead, UBS has retrenched, saying it would focus on its traditional very high net worth customer base.
The bank plans to offer more traditional banking services to its wealthy American clients, such as mortgages and loans. Kelleher said he sees “low-hanging fruit” in boosting profitability in the US.
“We will not expand investment bank,” he said, adding that the unit can build on good equities trading but needs to improve its advisory business.
UBS is seeking more US institutional investors to buy the bank’s shares, according to Kelleher. To this end, the bank wants to get American analysts “to take a closer look at us” and is considering reporting the performance of its US businesses separately, including profit levels and assets under management.
There’s no reason for UBS to trade at a discount compared to US banks like Morgan Stanley, Kelleher said. “I would never have accepted the position of chairman if I didn’t believe that a higher valuation could be achieved and that this was a realistic goal,” he said.
The chairman, alongside chief executive officer Ralph Hamers, has been spending more time with institutional investors in the US, but Kelleher said the bank’s messaging about its goals and strategy could be more “straightforward.”
In China, UBS expects a boost in its business China in the second half of the year, as the country moves away from a zero-Covid policy and reopens the economy, Kelleher said.