Monkeys,
I am curious about the recent history of UBS and what went wrong for them recently to cause such a significant fall-off for them. I did energy banking so UBS was never on my mind and I did not know anyone who worked there. Seems like everyday people are roasting on them for one thing or another but I was never aware they had so many issues.
Hopefully some older people or others who are familiar with their history can chime on the big changes over the last 15 or so years that can explain where they are at today.
Edit: It's been difficult for me to piece together all the issues brought up in various threads without having a good and organized understanding of their history. Hoping to get some comprehensive comments here by monkeys that do know the history.
Thanks in advance for commenting and helping me understand.
UBS-CS integration was ok, not optimal but survivable. It’s brining in ex-Barclays leadership to humiliate, fire, demote, and abandon existing CS people who decided to stay and UBS people
Legacy UBS employees treated the worst out of anyone
Did UBS keep the CS energy group? They were a decent group before CS went under and UBS had closed their energy group a few years ago, just management not being able to manage the acquired groups properly?
CS energy had shuttered a bit before the blowup. They unwound their energy lending book in... 22 or so and it was a foregone conclusion that they would axe the office. But you're right, they were much more than decent, they were one of the top energy shops in their day. After the ~2015 crash they functionally recapitalized the entire industry, they led basically every equity deal.
They closed the office and fired most people if I’m not mistaken. Some were moved to GIG
There's a small handful who roll up under GIG but nowhere near the old CS group as far as scope
this is the news
How can be thi
sis wrong??????? NEWS WRONG????
or something enw
Lehman people doing Lehman things
If you read postmortems on Lehman a couple themes repeat at (UBS) including taking high risks (whale hunting), blind allegiance to leadership in a yes-man culture (Marco), and doing things when leadership should know better (non-transparent MD selection process I.e statistically significant better odds if coming from Barclays or anywhere else).
That's another point I am curious about, people always bring up Lehman and Barclays hires, but I am totally unaware of that aspect of UBS. Barclays and Lehman had good bankers and were competitive in the corporate IB space, did UBS just hire away all the duds?
Yes
Marco Valla lost the Barclays leadership competition that occurred in 2023 at Barclays because Barclays most senior leadership didn’t think he had what it took to lead the bank. They brought in who many in the bank felt was an outsider.
He got pissed worked on coming over through like Ros (also ex Lehman) who was at UBS which was decent but kind of chugging along in the Americas.
He then brought his allies who didn’t have the quality to be group heads and systematically started putting them on top of many product and coverage groups.
They then ironically made everyone at the bank from UBS and CS feel like outsiders with unfair treatment, and slowly started brining in Barclays people to spy on different groups and learn how he could consolidate power into his hands
Thanks, very informative
when was UBS decent and chugging along? Others were miles ahead, just look at the quals page post integration. cs heavy
Current leadership brought in all their friend group which is fine if they perform. You just have a friend group at the top because UBS gave over $100mm worth of guarantees as a big bet in 2023-2024.
They haven’t panned out barely have any deals and have been cutting and giving low bonuses to any non legacy Barclays / non legacy Legamn “friends of Marco.”
Legit good people bringing in revenue were upset with this treatment, felt they were being short changed, and they all have been leaving with most having left already.
Leaving the emperor with no clothes nor deal flow with him and his closet allies unable to carry the banks deal flow.
Is Marco the head of IB there? What did he do before?
I would think it would be pretty obvious to not hire junior or other MDs who don't bring in much revenue en masse, unless they thought that they were buying MD talent "low" and hoping the UBS brand would help them sell services.
Feels like a corporate coup of the century to lead an IB and hook up your not so great buddies with huge salaries and guaranteed bonuses.
8 years at CS, 3 years Lehman, 15 years Barclays, mostly Consumer background but they made him head of TMT and consumer at the same time at Barclays.
Well you don’t know that people will or won’t work out and on a guarantee your only motivation to perform is to stay on and not get fired after your guarantee is over. As long as Marco was in charge you felt your chances to stay on indefinetly were pretty good, so your only motivation to perform is just to do enough to make sure Marco at the top could stay
Has anything gone well for GB over the past 3 years? Any victories or successes?
Yes revenue not 0, so there are deals. Just nowhere near the rate where you expect a BB to be at relative to crazy amount of manpower there
For many groups the have 0s throughout much of the year and maybe eek out a deal in the second half of the year
The bank has a few rainmakers in America who bring in every large-cap deal the bank has done in the last year. It's 2-3 guys in GIG, 1 guy in CR, and 2-3 in Sponsors/LevFin. Some other people here and there are acceptable BB MDs who bring in fees, but the vast majority of the rest are just net negatives. TBF, post-merger UBS has increased market share substantially (relative to pre-acquisition UBS) in GIG, LevFin, and Sponsors (primarily due to CS rainmakers who I assume are on insane guarantees)... It's just that they have lost share in most other groups to a drastic level, making the bank as a whole the same or slightly worse compared to pre-acquisition levels. It's the single most top-heavy full-service bank on the street, people-wise and group-wise.
Views on Marco and the Americas head, Tech, M&T, M&A Heads? They were all pretty senior, did they pan out and do you think they will?
The revenue per person in the Americas is likely one of the least out of all the banks. Kind of unsustainable when they have double the manpower that some banks in similar positions in the league tables have
The sooner we rip the bandaid off and get rid of MV and some of these hapless group heads, the quick we can recover.
My only fear is Sergio is gonna give Marco another year (he has already had 2, but when they started they rolled out a 3 year plan) which will just slow down the build further. If we wait until fall / the end of 2026 to fix our issues it’ll be too late
Just delaying the inevitable. Close to impossible for him to get to promised deal flow in the next year when looking at his performance from a holistic 3 year perspective
How are juniors and mid levels paid there? Must be awful / BofA levels
Just awful, really awful
Not a serious organization, just a glamorized fraternity. Prospects shouldn’t take them seriously and neither should clients.
Gonna give a detailed response here / left the bank somewhat recently over many concerns I had.
CS used to work on big deals, but took a ton of risk and had questionable ethics/controls in place (on even things like compliance, fees, ELs, KYC etc). Semi-toxic culture, but nothing out of the norm.
UBS took very little risk, had excellent controls, and found a niche little existence working on small deals, an occasional large one, and kept a pretty nice culture where people stayed and were brought up through the ranks to get paid average bonuses and a decent WLB (for banking). Yeah the league table performance wasnt great but they didn't overextend nor waste money on guarantees and things were stable. A good turnaround from the lows UBS hit post GFC.
Banks combined and Barclays leadership was brought in. Prior to the merger, most of the CS heavy hitters leave so its not really 1 +1 =2 (but for whatever reason leadership still believes the merger model a 22 year old analyst made...)
New barclays leadership comes in guns blazing disrespecting the old UBS guard for working on small deals (shunning them or outright firing them), puts pressure on seniors to do large transformational public mergers, and generally causes an instant culture shift for the worse. They then go on a hiring spree and bring over a bunch of barclays MDs and mid level bankers to supplement the group heads they brought over (all on generous guarantees).
Bank actually starts doing worse per capita. The new barclays hires are not bringing in deals and existing UBS/CS people are de-motived/actively looking to leave.
Bonus time hits and after all the generous guarantees are paid, there isnt much left over. the causes a doom loop, where people leave because they are pissed about comp, revenue drops due to people leaving, bank fixes with MORE MDS on gaurantees (from Barclays mainly). Strong performers are given mid bucket ratings due to the curve being wasted on the top bucket gaurantees. Doom loop continues.
People start whining online about this, and students/laterals see this and start reneging and/or putting UBS last for recruiting over every bank. the new on campus hires that come here are thus extremely mid and slow things down/piss off the remaining seniors/mid levels even more.
This upcoming jan 2026 bonus round will be a killer. There are so many guarantees that need to be paid, and revenue is not doing well. Doom loop will be very pronounced.
They are like a sport franchise that brought in a terrible contract (Lakers with Westbrook, Browns with Deshaun Watson). UBS is in cap hell and there is no easy way out of it.
This is so spot on. I remember the whole having a min fee or not engaging with clients talks. Like we are moving up market, all you have to do is talk to bigger clients and they will give you bigger fees.
This was obviously completely wrong, large clients overbanked which made the large deals harder, and larger banks were going down market which made UBS lesser focus on smaller client even harder to win bussiness. The arrogance showed by the Barclays leaders, because their egos got blown up on way too generous guarantees, significantly hurt the bank.
They just assumed that since two BB banks combined, and with "better" barclays leadership, the bank could just do the same deals JPM, GS, MS, Citi do.
Issue is that CS reputation was destroyed over a very short period (what legit board really wants to hand the reigns to CS for a transformational deal....). Reputations take decades to build and days to shatter.
So it was really just status quo UBS with some additional capability in coverage areas with CS added in.
To just assume you can bring in some barclays bankers that lost political battles at their prior firm and suddenly convince boards UBS should compete with the top banks on large situations was unrealistic. They should have dug in on the niche small deal/cross border/sponsors angle and picked their spots for the large deals that came in every once in awhile. All while focusing on great culture to keep things running smoothly with decent on campus recruiting.
^^^^ bingo
Well hope the bank can fund at least all the guarantees with proceeds from the Walgreens to be taken private by Sycamore in $10 billion deal for 2026 bonus.
Note at least 7 banks on the deal so good luck on the economics
Latest analyst class is so bad. Class of 2022 and class of 2023 were so much better.
This sounds shockingly similar to what’s happening at BofA, except instead of a merger BofA ballooned headcount via internal means.
The common thread with a spiraling IB is the bank overextending itself on lackluster MDs who don’t bring in business. These people eat up a large portion of the bonus pool while not bringing in revenue, which leads to low bonuses at the junior and mid levels. The good mid levels leave so the bank has no MD pipeline, so they try to “fix” the problem by overpaying for more lackluster MDs, which creates a vicious cycle.
If a bank wants to grow, it mostly comes down fo the quality of the MDs the bank brings in. If they’re good, they bring in revenue… mid levels and juniors are paid market… they stay to create a sustainable pipeline.
not to mention a very bloated, incompetent aso class, where the competent aso's leave and all the shit asos stay...
Definetly doesn’t help that all the former Barclays people have negative charisma
Prior post was dead on. We’re in a doom loop that won’t be easy to reverse. Our revenue per MD or per Front office HC has to be the lowest street wide by a significant margin at this point.
Best strategy would be to RIF unproductive MDs ASAP to conserve 2026 bonus pool for solid / high performers to stop the loop in the next cycle.
And then very slowly rebuild from there, with a few select hires and internally developing people like in the past.
If the above doesnt happen the doom loop will get even worse post 2026 bonus cycle, and existing employees will be checked out even more.
I bet analysts get RIFd to pay for the guaranteed bonuses
A bit of adverse selection where if you were good and doing well at Barclays you stayed and didn’t follow Marco. If you were bad you left for UBS and got your guarantee.
Also look back on the advisors giving great advise:
Financial News
The key dealmakers behind UBS’s rescue deal for Credit Suisse
By: Paul Clarke
“Morgan Stanley advised UBS, according to people familiar with the matter.
Guillaume Gabaix, co-head of its global financial institutions group, and Colm Donlon, its former head of Emea M&A who recently became chair of the investment banking division in the region, worked with the Swiss bank's executive team at its Zurich headquarters.
JPMorgan also worked with UBS on the deal, with Joel Chapellier, a 24-year veteran of the Wall Street bank and head of Emea FIG M&A, spearheading a team of dealmakers from the Wall Street bank.”
Their 22 year olds models will haunt UBs for a decade
I will say that my own personal experience was the culture was good. Only speaking for myself. Heard others esp in tech were not as fortunate. That being said, there was just too much uncertainty so I left as a career business decision
Fascinating thread. This is what this forum is for.
Invested in the wrong region. Rather than trying to play with the big boys in US where UBS just doesn't have the balance sheet or risk appetite or the people, it should have invested in its stronger franchises namely in APAC and EMEA. APAC especially a lot of American banks are under pressure to do less China related deals and thats a big opportunity for UBS which becomes effectively the only option in the top tier.
Marco and friends on the chopping block. Just hate to see it
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