How did UBS Double MD Count yet Lose Marketshare?
Just curious how this is even possible. You’d figure more MDs means a greater share of IB revenue
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Bad hiring and loss of MDs that generated fees. UBS lost share compared to pro forma from CS acquisition, it's back to old UBS levels. Also UBS had a problem where basically most groups went down and a few got better, the total outcome being worse than the pro-forma franchise that is extremely top-heavy. The vast majority of fees comes from Sponsor deals, still mostly in the LevFin product and in the Industrials sector. Some other groups, like CR/HC, have a few good MDs, but are useless outside of that. Most of the groups like TMT/RE are just completely useless. The outcome you get is a bank in the ~15-20 range overall, with some groups in the 5-10 range and others in the 40-50 range.
Delete
because u is the unibank
b is bon
S is so long.
so the deal is lsot ttttt
right now there are two or three MDs that have more revenue than HC, RELL, Tech, M&T, FIG combined
Last year, Industrials (a regular old coverage group that as a sector wasn't even the largest or close to it of the overall M&A space) had more revenue than Tech, RELL, M&T, and FIG ... combined. LevFin and Sponsors did as well, but that's always the case, given UBS is a bank that basically exists to do sponsor work, and both teams work very closely with coverage teams. The fact that a single coverage group has multiple times of revenue of other groups combined is telling of how top-heavy the bank is. UBS is without a doubt the most top-heavy full-coverage bank.
its scary when its really like 2-3Mds in that group, and 1 in consumer. Those MDs leave and UBS is basically forced to divest the entire US americas franchise.
There are MDs on the floor who have more revenue in one month than tech,M&T, real estate over the last 3 years combined
We'll see what happens with UBS GIG with their recent MD departures. Group head left for Wells Fargo, automotive guy left for I think JPM, then an energy guy left to be the CFO of a client. All that is to say, the heavy hitters are leaving and I think I might have gotten out at the right time.
Marco Valla. Hope this helps!
This is only year 2 of a 10 year process, relax
UBS will be the #6 bank in Americas… trust
Yes! Once they get bought by Truist! LFG!!
I too can put #6 and ubs logo on a slide, and send out a press release. But it doesn’t mean anything tbh
im for the first time genuinly worried about the UBS americans IB franchise existence. like this year is really bad, there are a ton of guarantees, a few Mds walk and its literally over for the franchise.
I bet they’ve been put on a clock. Turn it around by summer 2026 or else
hell yeah
Commented on this earlier, but my thoughts below as someone who's ex-UBS and left:
I think the bank as a whole will restructure, and every group except the top 3 groups (LevFin, Sponsors, and Industrials - though Industrials is a bit iffy since weak 2Q 2025) candidly is going to see a ton of layoffs. I do not believe there will be a spin-out or sale of IB division simply because every group except the top 3 is functionally a net negative (you can say CR/HC has had some flow, but there's huge key man risk there), so even if UBS were to sell or spin-off it wouldn't be worth much and the value of having a IB division even if only purely for client service on the WM side is probably higher since low hundreds of millions isn't going to move the needle for UBS as a business.
What I think will happen realistically: MV and the Barclays hires are gone in the upcoming 12 months, UBS brings in new leadership, and every team except maybe the top 3 gets rebuilt. For better or worse, America's is the weakest geography for the entire franchise, and the bank wants to grow its WM and ancillary businesses here because America's and Asia are what is viewed as "growth drivers".
If the financials are so bad what’s stopping them from just closing the doors one day in the Americas and then referring all UBS wealth management to lets say Barclays for a 10% kickback
Generally, banks want to keep everything in-house for branding and customer service. Also, they have really strong sponsor relationships, whereas many partners also use UBS for WM services, it goes both ways. I also think there's a reputational risk of losing their status as having a full-service bank at least nominally. Lastly, for better or worse it seems Sergio is pretty adamant in growing GB (they are continuously still hiring and those decisions come from SE), it's a pretty obvious growth area especially as WM is getting increasing more competitive and it's harder to grow share in a business where you have a dominant position as opposed to one where you are smaller.
UBS is a jobs program for the swiss gov
Another day another thread!
“Baaannnggg!” -Mike Breen
People must be desperate on the team
I’m sure when I get married or have a kid, it will be a very happy day.
But when I leave UBS, it will be the best day of my life. 100% serious.
They simply hired a bunch of 0-2 year MDs from other banks and promoted flunky EDs to MDs regardless of performance.
Alrhoufh MD count is way up, many are not MD quality. Those that are really have no incentive to perform with their guarantees.
UBS was too cheap to pay up and it cost them the franchise.
Yup. We “lost” one of our younger MDs to UBS last year. They never brought in $1 of fees on our platform, but didn’t stop UBS from offering a multi-year guarantee.
Lmao is the strategy at UBS just replacing their revenue generating MDs with non-revenue generating MDs?
Fuck you
Same. Ours even got a “Head of… “ title.
Bring back Ros!
Why did Ros stick around? To be the emergency 3rd string backup QB. The time has come, and the team has already been eliminated from the playoffs (BB status).
Sergio, put her back in! You have nothing to lose!
Put it in the louvre and take all my bananas
im absolutely dying right now lmao!!
Ros is the Joe Flacco/Ryan Fitzpatrick of UBS IB - eventually she will be the starter whether you like it or not!
It would be a shame if everyone SB’d every single comment on UBS related threads to keep it glued to the top of the trending tab… a real shame… don’t do it guys
Hasn't that been happening? I mean, objectively, it has.I am mildly torn on the UBS hate tbh, on one hand it does suck and most groups are terrible (and only declining even further) but on the other hand I am not sure if anyone (including myself) has said much truly new info after like comment 5-10).
Bonuses hit late July right? We should do a sick out right after!
All you need is one person to claim they believe they have measles
Dude I don’t know that they could afford analysts bonuses. They aren’t guaranteed bonuses and analysts are all replaceable. Won’t be that bad if they just postpone it 6 months
They’re already losing a lot of the top juniors, and they will actually lose the majority of good/excellent analysts once the bonus hits. If they zero’d out analysts this year, they will 100% be left with only bottom bucket shit analysts.
Analyst class has steadily been declining for years anyways…
................................................................
I explicitly told all the bright kids from my school to not recruit for UBS and have helped them connect with my friends at other banks so they can recruit and get offers elsewhere.
Deallogic shows that for M&A the bank is globally down 24% when the market is up 27%.
Many M&A process take a year, so signals banks has sucked since UBS and CS merged whcich we kind of all sensed. The first year the excuse was we were merging but they were still closing pre merger deals… really starting to see post merger efficiency now
10:45 am or pm?
Just not in a good place right now from what I’ve read here:
-Things feel different this year, and growing concern at the bank
-For many of the teams a majority of the bullpen is empty at 10:45 AM still strolling in, taking long breaks and most juniors able to leave early by like 7-8pm
-Never seen so many people unmotivated where they say well top bucket already decided (Barclays laterals, long term team favorites) so your performance doesn’t really matter because everything is locked in already, long before the rack and stack
-Bank is putting a lot of pressure on their seniors (Barclays) to perform by 2026, so everyone is very stressed
-Morale is very low and the rate of closing deals is extremely low. Many of the best people have left which leaves teams scrambling to perform with low to mid juniors, who frustrate their seniors with below average work
-Juniors do the bare minimum because their is just no motivation or incentive to perform
-Telling people at former schools to go recruit somewhere else because it felt disingenuous to try to sell them on coming to UBS at its current state
Morale just gets worse and worse every month… there is no culture or camaraderie left and everyone hates their lives so much
Turns out hiring MDs doesn’t increase a shit deal market, it’s crazy
Err… market up 24%
DEAL market
nice try Marco
I’m not Marco, see I have glasses and a mustache 🥸
“How did UBS double MD count yet lose market share”
By being UBS!!! 😂🙂👍🏼😃💸🏦🏦🏦
UBS doing UBS things
.
Has anyone here at UBS quiet quit / just stopped doing work? Like how long would it take to get fired if you just worked 11-5 pm every day, was unresponsive etc?
Put an automatic reply ( 6:00 PM to 9:00 AM, Monday–Friday)
“I’m currently out of office addressing unexpected urgent matters. I will circle back tomorrow morning.”
2. If asked say “Important private matters that I am not allowed to share”
3. Selectively respond “Sounds Good, Will do!,” “Understood still working it” and “Should be ready in the next couple days”
Still be responsive and easier to stay longer.
Misinterpret directions to do the bare minimum.
Sit on every assignment an extra hour or two than necessary to stretch out tasks and be unavailable for longer amounts of time.
Would not recommend. Seniors in the few good groups at UBS hate the bad groups at UBS and want those teams completely rebuilt (yes, this includes juniors; heard grumblings about how bad the work of the junior teams in some coverage groups). If you are in a bad group and cannot leave/laterally right now. Unless you are genuinely a top-tier performer, you will very likely get canned once your leadership gets canned, which, let's be real here, IB is a very cutthroat business, your leadership is getting canned very soon.
If in a non-competitive group (all groups except Sponsors, LevFin, Industrials, the guys who work with JL in CR, think like some groups like PCA and stuff on the edges are fine too, because I have heard that those are doing okay), you should be looking for a job ASAP. IB is an extremely cutthroat business, and I don't think MV has longer than a few months, maximum a year. Once he's gone, you will see a full result, and the groups that get hurt in full results are the ones that aren't bringing in flow.
"how long would it take to get fired if you just worked 11-5 pm every day, was unresponsive etc? "
if you are a DEI female hire - at least 2 years. You can probably get a PE offer as well a decent firm.
have seen this done personally.
Tech has a couple which are untouchable. Much better juniors have been let go
Agree with the prior post. I dont know how MV can be allowed to stay on for much longer. Certainly will be gone by next summer. And when he leaves, all the barclays people will be at grave risk.
At a minimum the heads of tech and m&t, who have been total 0s, should be replaced asap. I’m in one of the so called decent groups and know my seniors want these people out as they are clearly major drags on our comp.
There’s no point in grinding to do good work when the end result is having a shit bonus because leadership is redistributing wealth to shitty awful TMT MDs who suck and are terrible.
How has MV been that bad? Same question for M&T and Tech group heads?
Have they been actively bad or have they just gotten really unlucky on 50/50 decisions?
All have been ridiculously bad.
As mentioned in prior comment, TMT has had 100+ people working 12-16 hours a day for 2 years to generate $10mm in revenue.
If you took those same employees and dedicated that same time, labor, and effort towards creating a chain of hamburger restaurants in Manhattan, you could make make more revenue.
Come on guys…
Don’t focus on the negatives.
Let’s list things we like about UBS.
I’ll start - they have air conditioning in the office during the summer and heat in the office during the winter!
Nope it gets hot around 6pm in EMA in the summer when the auto-AC turns off to save on energy
Omg they can’t even get that right
It’s a sweatshop of course it should be sweaty
I’ll continue..
I like the building we are in (EMA), it adds to the legitimacy I feel when I walk into work. The legitimacy I know I’ll never receive after years grinding and 0 closed deals. Best I got was 4th bank on lev fin / sponsor loan deal
Sometimes I look longingly at the Sony employees leaving work at 4:30 pm and know I’ll never have what they have
Those 4th bank of LevFin deals is what is in the business called M&A tips, which is a nice way of saying "here's some money for being good at LevFin, but we don't trust you with anything M&A related".
Not related to UBS but I want more SBs on my account… please SB! Thanks
I bet that weighted pipeline shows they will be better than Goldman over the next 3 years 😏
they're the leading advisor on deals that UBS advises, take that GS
Would actually argue they are the junior advisor on almost everything and barely ever lead anything over $1bn valuation
It’s a bunch of washed up Lehman guys on a power trip, like bulls in a china shop, who were let in to CS and UBS. What did you expect would happen
The joy is gone and no one really smiles anymore. A combination of anger, sadness and desperation permeates the halls
When is the next round of layoffs? Are they going to layoff analysts ahead of bonuses?
They might financials are bleak according to my source. They’ll either wait until the day interns have a volunteering or the day after they leave.
Their reputation already sucks so they have nothing to lose tbh..
They should do it while interns are here lmao… helps set their expectations
UBS, more like This is-BS amirite?
This is really really sad
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
In all seriousness where is Executive Director in IB - Gen?
Has he been marked safe?!?
He’s senior VP in Corp dev now
Indeed, wow, you caught me. What gave it away?
Had to get ramped up in new role/actually do some deal work. Life is much better after leaving UBS, would highly recommend! With that being said, I would like to be excluded from the broader UBS hate narrative. I am not/nor ever was, a TMT banker, so clearly haven't experienced directly whatever you guys have to get to this stage of UBS hatred. I just don't think current leadership is doing well/cultural degradation/mass firings/was annoyed at the insane waste of bonus money at useless MDs, but more importantly, got a corp job that pays the same as UBS with fewer hours + more upside possibility because of equity. Honestly, don't even hate my overall experience at the firm, it was a nice spot to be in for a while, and I got an exit I am very happy with.
They had this coming for years now
How is C&R doing?
Rumor is Marco will be made Vice Chairman in September and Ros and Javier will be take over again. LFG!
F Lehman bros, tanked another firm
I’d say several group heads have some explaining to do
Who is the source? In as broad a way to protect the persons id as possible
wow serious?
this would be delicious. I actually like Marco, he's a nice guy and I think he cares about junior bankers. But the barclays people he brought in really made things a lot worse (and they have not delivered at all).
Why are the Lehman people so bad? Wasn’t Lehman pretty good at IB advisory back in the day? I’m a bit too young to understand that part of the financial sector history…
They’re not bad per se it’s just adverse selection where only bad bankers who don’t bring in deals are brought over by Marco to join UBS
A lot of them got anxious after close 0 deals in nearly 2 years.
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