Predicted 1Q 2027 Story - UBS IB blames Outlook Outage for Down Quarter

While Outlook was still down across Wall Street on November 12, 2026, UBS opened a spreadsheet to track every deal it might lose because of the outage. By the fourth-quarter earnings call, the spreadsheet included a mandate Evercore had won in October.

Investment banking revenue missed expectations. U.S. advisory wallet share fell 20 more basis points. The CFO put up a slide showing where it had gone. The bars were labeled Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Microsoft.

“Microsoft won advisory mandates?” an analyst asked.

“Microsoft is where we’ve booked the explanation.”

UBS said the outage had cost it ten $1+ billion sell-side mandates, two sponsor refinancings, and a pitch to a company whose CEO later confirmed he’d received all 14 emails and had been ignoring them since September.

“How did you calculate the lost fees?” another analyst asked.

“We used the fees our competitors actually earned. Those numbers are audited.”

The analyst pointed out that JPMorgan’s Outlook had gone down too.

“Correct,” the CFO said. “They had to call our clients one at a time.”

On an Outlook-adjusted basis, UBS said it had gained market share. An analyst asked how that worked. Investor relations explained that the calculation assigned UBS credit for every deal it would have won if the client had read the email, liked the pitch, agreed to the fee, and changed its mind about hiring Goldman.