Article: US UBS plunges in league Tables, fraction of its former size
Efinancialcareers:
The charts suggesting UBS might need more Morgan Stanley bankers in America
As we observed last month, UBS's array of ex-Barclays ex-Lehman bankers don't seem to have moved mountains much in its US investment banking business, where the Swiss bank has plunged in the league tables and now appears to have a business a fraction of its former size.
Four years ago, the combined entity of UBS and Credit Suisse ranked fifth in the Americas for investment banking revenue share. Now it's nowhere to be seen in the top 20 and the London Stock Exchange Group says it has a market share of less than 1%.
What happened? UBS's US investment bank has never been quite the same since the end of the COVID boom and the acquisition of Credit Suisse in 2023. 2023 was also the year in which UBS hired all its senior bankers from Barclays. It doesn't have much to show for that. It seems the leveraged finance business has been keeping things afloat, but Marc Warm, the head of lev fin, left for Barclays in May.
UBS is trying to make amends. When it announced its first quarter results the bank said it's investing in the Americas and claimed to be adding market share. It's hired various US bankers, including - most recently - Taylor Henricks from Morgan Stanley as head of M&A in the Americas and Peter Toal from Barclays as head of leveraged and debt capital markets to replace Warm. Reuters reported that Henricks is there to help expand UBS's investment bank in the Americas; maybe more Morgan Stanley hires will follow.
UBS has also taken the curious step of combining its global M&A and sponsors advisory unit into a single group, while letting none of its many US sponsors bankers go. The chart below shows global sponsors revenues at the Swiss bank over the past six years. The trajectory is not unfamiliar.
It’d almost be difficult to replicate that level of decline if you were trying to, incredible falloff
WSO shitposting is a leading indicator of rough performance
Top investment banks in the Americas by fees, 1H 2025
LOL I scrolled the list thrice to find UBS as I thought I missed it...
How are they not even top 20
Looks like you’ll end up just doing some loans and likely not much else
Why does this forum keep brining them up? They don’t really matter
Look much worse than precovid
Loans for a ShitCo PortCo with a side of aimless marketing
UBS is paradise
it just keeps getting worse and worse
I'm fairly certain posts to this effect have been made in the past, continuously for 7-8 months. Once again, posts and comments have been upvoted en masse. Is WSO or like various people in this forum on some kind of anti-UBS death cult? This level of obsession is not normal.
no other firm was gifted another firm with a govt backstop making this story interesting to follow and track for the business press.
Has to be the fumble of the decade in IB
This is UBS Oasis
Fake news on “letting many of its sponsors bankers go”. 1 MD left from LA office and 1 left to go to a sponsor.
Honestly at this point it’s incredible how many people spend their time continually posting about UBS, only thing I can think of is they think SB’s convert into a currency or new sh!tcoin.
We have been over this a billion times - Barclays hires have largely been disappointing, some strong CS bankers left the firm as a result of shakeups, and sector groups largely lacking with the exception of a few standout MDs in industrials, financials, and consumer head. Sponsors / leveraged finance still the engine room (same as always was at both CS and UBS). When will people stop beating the dead horse? Find something new to talk about
Congrats on UBS!
Thought it was just 1 Sponsor's MD. 2 Sponsor's MD's seems like a lot given the group was a smaller group senior headcount wise. The updated count is as follows for people leaving and joining this year:
In 2025, UBS has lost: the head of LDCM, 1 MD in LevFin, 2 MD in Sponsors, 2 HC MDs (one of which was a former co-head at MS and another HC MD to MS), 1 Industrial MDs (co-head of Industrials), and at least 1 Tech MD got laid off (could be more given there's 4 new Tech hires, but unconfirmed if there is any more).
UBS has hired: 2 Tech MDs from BoFA, 1 CR MD from Stifel (ex Citi and BoFA), 1 MD in Tech M&A from MS, 3 HC MDs from RBC, 1 MD in M&T, 1 MD in Tech ECM from Citi, and 1 LDCM MD from Barclays.
Data for people leaving is mostly people at the firm and/or news articles. The list of new people is solely sourced from the Reuters article earlier.
A good portion 5+ hired in the NY still were previously / not immediately previously Barclays/Lehman bankers
excited to hear more from SVP in corpdev
P sure he’s still here as Intern in IB-M&A
I feel like he has multiple accounts
I am not affiliated with him, am not a UBS hater like that dude is. He's also still pretty active on here, still posting on a bunch of the other threads on the forum. Have noticed he's skipped out on UBS threads, but he's commented on a lot of the other threads recently. Kinda impossible to avoid him if you browse this forum, given he's the top commenter on a bunch of threads.
Lost another LCM MD this week. All of the few remaining good CS MDs are jumping ship
Only CS people left are mediocre, unambitious mid-levels and junior MDs that couldn’t get any offers (outside of Head of Consumer who is legit, he must be getting 8 figure comp to stay)
LDCM or LevFin? At this point, just tracking all the departures for the sake of the WSO collective. I am not as much of a UBS hater as people on this forum, but it seems like it'd be helpful and, at the very least, create full information for prospects/incoming interns or analysts for placement. Also wondering if aware of any more than the 1 tech layoff, a bit confused by that one since it's seemingly 1 person out and 4 people in. HC is the second most lop-sided group, but it's 3 people in and 2 people out there, so a little more understandable.
UBS interns rn:
👁️👄👁️
UBS interns should do literally anything else with their life rather than voluntary sign up for this hell
I think this is way exaggerated. At the end of the day, thousands of people would do a lot to just get into IB. Most kids, even at other large finance firms and at top schools that recruit for IB, end up with no offer or at even worse places. UBS is still a great outcome out of college. As much as it must suck to be fired from UBS, having had IB experience is still a very positive experience to show for future finance careers.
Blow me down, there’s another UBS post at the top of my feed. Come on now, these are starting to get boring.
Lol so Barclays poached a UBS guys to be head of levfin, and then UBS hired one of the guys Barclays overlooked internally for the job as their new head of levfin... am I missing anything here?
Nope that's basically it
It's frustrating since UBS could have been so squared away. Keep the CS heavy hitters, obviously fire the entire old CS risk department, and then leverage CS's strong legacy IB platform with UBS's strong WM platform to dominate mid market banking (business owners retiring and looking to sell, etc) for some easy fees even if not the greatest, and then the heavy hitters continue to win with large corporates.
I think that's really why these threads keep popping up. People forget how strong CS was before they blew up. UBS had a giant win handed to them with a government backstop and dropped the ball
The culture on my team at UBS was good but we had a number of MDs leaving including our group head and I would not be shocked if there was another wave of layoffs. I'd like to see them do well since I personally had a good time there but at the end of the day, it's business. We've all seen the same Dealogic numbers. I honestly don't know what the way forward is for them, and that's a problem. I'm not some kid out of undergrad anymore so just felt like too much risk
Simultaneous combination of more firms in IB, implementation of AI in IB, failure to save any potential CS performance and new leadership choosing the wrong strategy out of arrogance, could be an extinction level event for UBS IB in the Americas
Likely HBS bussiness case study in 2027:
Global Ambitions, Local Realities: UBS’s Struggle to Scale U.S. Investment Banking
This case examines UBS’s post-merger efforts to expand its investment banking footprint in the United States amid heightened competition, cultural integration challenges following the acquisition of Credit Suisse, and strategic misalignment between global leadership goals and regional execution. It analyzes how leadership transitions, organizational restructuring, and talent retention efforts have shaped UBS’s ability to gain market share in a mature and highly competitive advisory environment.
It really should be. Its a case study in how to do things wrong in all facets.
Good thing we have WM to fund our underperformance. Thank you to all the great FAs for subsidizing our comp!
They should of paid more attention in their corp strategy classes, analysis of strengths and weaknesses would of helped
They don’t matter
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