Three people who were familiar with the plans said Swiss lender UBS will be shrinking its corporate advisory and investment banking services that caters the wealthy elite in some of emerging market countries. The sources said the need to reduce the lender's services was in order for UBS to not overlap its services with its other departments.
One of the sources said, "There were overlaps with the normal investment banking operations and it wasn't clear what the CAG staff were doing in certain geographies where there were good investment bankers to execute transactions."
UBS' Corporate Advisory Group (CAG) provides advisory services in structured equity products, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPOs), financing options to ultra-rich entrepreneurs and individuals who are already customers of the bank's wealth management unit. The bank's wealthy elite usually have a minimum USD25 million in investment assets.CAG has 80 bankers employed in 15 offices all over the world. The purpose of the unit was to act as the interface between the wealth management and investment banking operations of the bank.
The restructuring, said sources, would be mostly done in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, Asia, and other key emerging markets. However, it was not revealed on how many jobs will be lost due to the restructuring of CAG.
Once the restructuring will be completed, CAG will now focus on providing advisory services on corporate finance activities. However, UBS' investment bankers will be making the execution part, said the sources, who refused to be identified as the plans were not made public.
Regarding the existing clients in the emerging markets UBS decided to scale back, the bank will continue to serve them via its existing local wealth management staff, sources said. UBS' investment banking team will be doing the pitching for the clients' deals-related requirement, said the sources.
When asked by Reuters regarding the report, UBS refused to provide one.
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