Wed, Feb 1st 2023
On Zurich’s Paradeplatz, headquarters for UBS and Credit Suisse are neighbors.
Swiss bank UBS announced this week that it saw a 23% increase in pre-tax profits for its last quarter of 2023, thanks to an influx of clients who left their struggling competitor Credit Suisse.
“Clients turned to us for advice and stability,” UBS chief executive Ralph Hamers told the Financial Times on Tuesday. The blow comes after months of scandals, plummeting stocks, and a steady outflow of billions. At one point #DebitSuisse was even trending on social media platform Twitter.
The floundering Swiss bank made an attempt in late October to shore up confidence by announcing a radical restructuring plan, but rumors of its financial health scared off many of their wealth management clients. UBS was the main recipient of customers pulling their cash out of Credit Suisse accounts.
Credit Suisse has suffered blow after blow in the past years, from a CEO employee spying scandal to free-falling stock prices.
“Although we are certainly the natural place for these clients to go to, they are generally already a client of ours,” Hamers said. The increase means about 1.58 billion CHF ($1.7 billion) in net profit from October to the end of 2023, alone. UBS brought home about 7 billion Swiss francs in profit for the year.
UBS also profited off rising interest rates, seeing a 35% increase in its wealth management business. Moreover, UBS re-purchased about 5 billion CHF in shares that will be distributed to shareholders in buybacks in 2023. UBS shares are trading at a 24% premium, which makes it the most valuable large bank in Europe, according to FT.
Meanwhile, Credit Suisse has yet to report its fourth quarter earnings or losses from 2023.
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