Tue, Nov 7th 2023
UBS is making progress with the integration of its former competitor Credit Suisse. In the third quarter alone, the merged bank reported that it had cut more than 4,000 jobs worldwide. It has also reported cost savings in the billions, putting it ahead of its own plan.
Compared to the combined headcount at the end of 2022 of the then still separate companies UBS and CS, the number of jobs has now been reduced by more than 13,000 in total, UBS announced on Tuesday. The figure also includes outsourced jobs and consultants.
On a full-time equivalent basis, UBS now reports 115,981 jobs as at the end of September, after last estimating the number of full-time positions at the end of June 2023 at 119,100.
UBS put the savings achieved to date as part of the integration of CS at around 3 billion dollars. This means that it has already achieved the target set for the end of the year one quarter earlier than originally announced, writes the major bank. It now expects to make further progress in the fourth quarter
Thanks to the savings, the operating expenses of the combined Group fell by 5% to USD 9.6 billion on an underlying basis, i.e. excluding integration costs. The decline was due not least to the implementation of cost savings in the NCL (“Non Core & Legacy”) processing unit as well as the restructuring of the Investment Bank. In addition, the “elimination of duplication in all business areas” was also a factor.
In the NCL run-off unit, into which UBS has transferred its “non-core assets”, risk-weighted assets (RWA) were reduced by around 6.4 billion dollars in the quarter under review. UBS assures that 80 percent of this was achieved through liquidations “on favorable terms”. This has also improved its capital position: in total, core capital (CET1) of around 1 billion dollars has been released.
In recent months, UBS has given little information about the individual steps it is taking to reduce its workforce as part of the CS integration. However, there have been repeated reports in various media in recent months about job cuts in various divisions.
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