Don’t work at UBS - UBS Sucks
UBS has a history of firing people and clawing back bonuses. See Bloomberg news articles. Culture there also sucks.
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UBS fucked over half of their 2022 intern class who had signed return offer contracts and were supposed to start in July 2023.
Less than a month before the July 2023 class was supposed to start (and after everyone had already signed expensive leases in NYC), they deferred the employment start date of half of the group by seven months to February 2024. How did they decide who to defer? Allegedly these decisions were primarily made by HR and were based on citizenship status/visa, with non Americans favored (aka zero internationals were deferred).
The deferred class finally started in February 2024 (7 months later). The group that started in July 2023 was generally promoted to associate by July 2025, while the deferred class was told they had to work 2.5 years instead of 2 for the associate promotion. So the deferred class missed out on 7 months of analyst comp and now is a full year behind in salary for the rest of their career.
tldr: UBS recently didn’t honor their signed return offers for half the analyst class :)
Allegedly for the spots removing that could hold Americans HR used the fucking random function on excel
I’m impressed UBS HR knows how to use Excel functions
I’m pretty sure international students have 6 months to begin a job post-grad before their visa expires. If the bank needed to defer X candidates, it’d have to defer Americans or else essentially rescind and re-recruit the international contingent.
FTR, I think it is ludicrous that H1Bs are being issued for roles with thousands of qualified American applicants.
Not sure if still the case, but my group at UBS targeted having 50% of the analyst class as internationals on H1B/OPT visas.
how so?
please elaborate
Culture at UBS was extremely toxic - wouldn’t wish it on my enemies
I’ve worked at many places on the street, and UBS by far the worst to be at. Everyone there is wasting away their career. Not a lot of learning opportunities, not a lot of deal, not a lot of mentorship
average analyst in my group closed zero M&A deals and received zero mentorship
Just an awkward glare from lil’voldemort
Interns should all be starting to network with other banks right now, so when they get exploding return offers they could go elsewhere
UBS showing up to Midwest bake-offs with all Asian bake-off teams… not a winning strategy
Most Americans are very skeptical of most Asians especially of Chinese descent.
And rightly so…
I don’t think WSO understands how bad it really is at UBS. The posts all understate how bad it is
My group at UBS was truly inhumane and environment where verbal abuse (and even worse behavior) from seniors was normalized. Analysts and associates regularly cried. Working at UBS directly caused severe depression and concerning physical health issues for me. I had to go to the doctor many times because of physical health issues caused by overwork.
And the compensation was below street, deal experience was bad (literally no sell-side M&A deals for most analysts in most groups), and exits are subpar relative to other banks.
If you’re an intern or student reading this, stay the fuck away at all costs. If you’re a current employee, do whatever you can to get out ASAP. This place will damage you severely and I would recommend doing literally anything else with your life.
Average UBS M&A experience. Group is hell on earth. So many people quit without anything lined-up because there are not even any exits.
It’s worse than anyone can possibly imagine
I wasted 2 years working on ongoing deals that lasted 19 months that any legit MD would have scrapped as a waste of time. Instead I grinded every week and weekend on a low chance deal that went nearly 2 years that predictably died.
And since I was so jammed on these subpar deals I had no capacity to take on anything else that was possibly more worth my time.
Literally just wasted so much time. Actually makes me so upset.
I'm OK if you swing and take chances. At least be up front and manage expectations. There's no need to yell or get mad if someone missed comments for a longshot pitch deck where the team is swinging for the fences.
Many of these MDs treat the bad low quality never gonna sign transactions like it's a premier mandate and stress out the team for no reason.
When the bank focused on smaller niche processes (pre barclays takeover) they had less demoralizing work and less pointless pitching. Bank won more. Funny how that works.
I’ve grinded on bake off decks where UBS wasn’t even invited to the bake-off but we spent weeks putting together thick 60 page deck. We were never told the outcome for weeks after (MD didn’t bother even telling us the outcome).
A month later my roommates friend who worked at the fund selling the asset told me UBS wasn’t even invited to the bake-off, and they never even met with UBS during that process.
Many such cases. Lots of MDs just lie and grift
Reading this thread, I can only conclude we should have raised the hiring bar. Juniors have somehow convinced themselves they’re the product. You’re not. You’re overhead until proven otherwise.
You work on the pitches we assign. You stay until the work is done. You don’t decide whether a deal is “real,” whether an MD deserves a client, or whether your time is being “used efficiently.” That’s way above your pay grade.
The irony is the people writing essays on WSO about how terrible UBS is are the same people who’d crawl over broken glass for an offer from any other bulge bracket. You were hired to make senior bankers more productive. If that bothers you, consulting firms are down the street.
Everyone who doesn’t originate in banking is overhead, and by far the biggest overhead in banking is MD’s who can’t originate.
Analysts and asos are describing heart palpitations and health issues from grinding on fake deals and fake pitches, and MDs response is to punch down and tell them they’re “overhead” who should know their place.
In an industry that has killed juniors from overwork, that’s not leadership - that’s disgraceful. Your deals die and your best people leave for the same reason, and it’s not the hiring bar.
No offense, but as an MD commenting on this site, good chance you’re the useless overhead that they’re talking about.
You definitely win no pitches and are divorced
Reading this reply from an MD, my guess is that they are either relatively junior or an underperforming MD. In sports, it’s not the players who get fired after a losing season—it’s the coach. Analysts, Associates, and VPs generally have the skills necessary to perform. However, if the MD—the coach—has no idea what they are doing, the junior staff are hardly to blame for the inadequacies of either the MD or the institution. Blaming junior employees for organizational failures is often a convenient way to avoid addressing deficiencies at the top.
I’m glad this discussion was started. Interns and prospective employees deserve to know what they are getting themselves into. UBS is barely a blip on the league tables and, increasingly, on anyone’s radar.
Congrats ubs
Haha is it really so bad on the IB side. On S&T side and seems G.
Just based on the results in the quarterly reports, think the trading team is doing quite well and making lots of money. No idea what the culture is like but I’m sure it’s better than UBS IB as literally anything is better
Is very interesting
UBS is paradise
Sounds like UBS management has succeeded in increasing attrition, given the comp issues and mandatory 5 days in office, etc. UBS GB Americas simply isnt a good place to work.
Average employee quality at all levels continue to decline. Total braindrain
Y'all roasting UBS's IB league table ranking like the stock's dead money, but the chart tells a different story. Up ~50% over the past year, 52-week range of $27.25–$41.49. Q1 2026 net profit jumped 80% YoY, blowing past the $2.8B consensus. RoCET1 at 16.8%, well above medium-term targets. Sure, they're not winning M&A league tables against GS/MS/JPM, but Global Markets just had a record quarter and CS integration is basically wrapped. This ain't the disaster y'all are pricing in.
Combination of wealth management, trading, APAC. Not US IB
Stock price would probably go up if they divested the US IB
water found in ocean
UBS is a leading wealth management that has an IB function for the purposes of cross-sell. I am shocked a bunch of supposed bankers are not able to figure this out. They are much better at WM outside the US, where they are number 1 in the world, which is why the US is lagging.
The banks investment bank exists to serve their WM clients including but not limited to their PE leadership client base, which is also why they are aggressive on leveraged loans. Silicon Valley has less people in traditional wealth management, which can also help explain why tech is a focus area and an area where they are struggling.
yeah but UBS tech used to be pretty good (2020, 2021) before team got poached by SVB
UBS hasn't been a good tech M&A bank for corporates since for over a decade, it was ~5-6 years ago one of the top tech Leveraged Loans franchises who also did primarily sponsors M&A. UBS tech today is only competitive in IPO's, which they seem decent in with active roles on some IPO's, and nothing else due to their ability to reach the world's largest wealth management client base.
DEL
Best place to learn corporate politics
Unironically the most valuable lesson I learned from UBS
Ubs blows, and it gets worse every year since 2023
UBS will teach you a very important skill in life: life is not fair and the only thing that matters is who you can suck up to. If you cannot suck up to the right people, you will get paid less, not promoted, and work longer because you get all the worst staffings.
please confirm
is it safe to deposit to UBS??!!?
Rumor has it that UBS may have a bank run, would pull your money ASAP
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