UBS fund subsidiary by far the biggest player on the stock market
Published: Monday, May 27th 2024, 10:20
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Following the merger with the corresponding subsidiary of Credit Suisse, the fund subsidiary of UBS has become by far the largest player on the Swiss stock market. The big bank holds more than 3 percent of the shares in well over 100 SPI companies and is even the largest single shareholder in almost 30 of them.
Just over a year after the merger was announced in March 2023, the two fund companies UBS Fund Management (Switzerland) AG and Credit Suisse Funds AG were recently merged. In this context, UBS had to re-notify all holdings of at least 3 percent to the Swiss stock exchange SIX in accordance with stock exchange requirements.
Largest shareholder in many companies
And these figures are quite something. According to an analysis by the news agency AWP based on data from the SIX stock exchange supervisory authority SER (as at May 20), the new UBS Fund Management held voting shares of 3% or more in no less than 119 of the 221 companies listed on the SIX. That is more than half of the companies listed on SIX.
We are talking about a real fund giant in the Swiss financial center. In terms of the number of shareholdings, it is well ahead of the US asset manager Blackrock, which held stakes of 3% or more in 46 companies listed on the SIX at the reporting date.
Other major players in this context are the ZKB fund subsidiary Swisscanto (17 companies), the US asset manager Capital Group (14), Safra Sarasin Investment Funds (13) and the Norwegian central bank Norges (8). Individual shareholders such as the well-known investors Rudolf Maag (7), Michael Pieper (5) and Peter Spuhler (5) also have an important say on the Swiss stock exchange.
14 times over 10 percent
However, UBS's new super fund company is not only an important shareholder in many SIX-listed companies, but quite often also the largest shareholder of all. In particular, where the old UBS and the former CS alone already held major stakes, the new company now owns shares in the double-digit percentage range in some cases.
Overall, the UBS fund subsidiary is the number one shareholder in 28 companies and holds a stake of more than 10 percent in 14 companies. It has very high stakes in technology group Ascom (18.6 percent) and food manufacturer Orior (18.2 percent), for example, while its positions in the two real estate companies PSP (14.9 percent) and Allreal (+14.1 percent) and consumer credit bank Cembra (14.0 percent) are also significant. On average, the holding amounts to a good 6 percent.
However, UBS Fund Management not only holds positions in small and medium-sized companies, but also has large holdings in SMI companies. It holds stakes of between 7.3 percent (Swiss Life) and 3.2 percent (Kühne+Nagel) in 18 of the 20 SMI companies; only in the jewelry group Richemont and the pharmaceutical group Roche has it not reported a stake of more than 3 percent.
Also involved in her own mother
The fact that the UBS fund subsidiary also holds a 5.3 percent stake in its parent company - the big bank UBS - makes it the second-largest shareholder after the big bank itself. According to traders, it is unprecedented for the fund subsidiary to hold more than 3 percent of its own parent company.
The investment has also caused a stir because it is frowned upon by local banks in particular to "load" client portfolios with shares in their own company, as the online section "Cash Insider" recently wrote. However, the majority of stock positions are likely to be in index-tracking funds.
The many and in some cases very high positions of the UBS fund subsidiary in Swiss companies are also a talking point in terms of participation rights at general meetings. For example, 65.7 percent of the share capital was represented at Ascom's AGM in mid-April, giving UBS a very high weighting with its 18.6 percent share of votes on controversial proposals.
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