UBS in Shambles as Proposed $100k H1B Fee Looms
UBS heavily relies on H1Bs at the junior level, so the new $100k fee will be quite the obstacle for them.
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Congrats on UBS!
Lmao
UBS going to have to overhaul their H1B churn and burn strategy
UBS should just outsource everything directly to Hyderabad and Pune, imagine the cost savings
BLUF: The credible strategy is not moving every UBS employee to India. They appear to be relocating virtually every repeatable production, technology, analytical and administrative task to India. UBS could move an additional 25,000 high-cost positions, create 18,000 Indian roles and generate approximately $3.5 billion of recurring annual savings.
They are positioning to make India the default location for every role that does not require local client access, or licensing. UBS had about 24,000 people in its Indian service organization post CS integration, and UBS is adding another 2,000 employees in Hyderabad.
UBS could eliminate approximately 25,000 more positions in the US, Switzerland, UK and other expensive locations and replace them with 18,000 positions in India after standardization, consolidation and AI-driven productivity improvements.
Relocation By Job role
Technology, data, testing and infrastructure
9,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 6,750 in India
Operations, finance and product control
8,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 5,200 in India
Risk, compliance and legal production
4,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 3,200 in India
IB, wealth and asset-management analytics
3,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 2,400 in India
HR, procurement and administration
1,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 450 in India
Total
25,000 (US/UK/Swiss) to 18,000 in India
This would produce a net global workforce reduction of approximately 7,000 positions while expanding UBS’s Indian workforce into the low-40,000 range.
Hyderabad would receive approximately 12,000 of the additional jobs, with another 6,000 split between Pune and Navi Mumbai to provide resilience. Hyderabad would become UBS’s primary global technology and production center, while Pune would serve as the active backup rather than concentrating every critical function in one city.
UBS appears to be position itself for an India-first location policy:
In investment banking, India-based teams would perform most valuation work, financial-model construction, trading and transaction comparables, pitchbook preparation, screening, data-room administration, diligence tracking, KYC preparation and recurring client materials. Onshore teams would retain client relationships, negotiation, judgment, committee presentations and final responsibility.
UBS would maintain a smaller onshore IB analyst class about 25–35% of today’s intake to preserve its future VP and MD pipeline. H-1B sponsorship would largely be reserved for specialized or genuinely client-facing talent rather than junior production roles.
Item
Annual impact
Eliminate 25,000 high-cost positions at $185,000 average cost
$4.63 billion
Add 18,000 India positions at $50,000 fully loaded cost
$(0.90) billion
Additional governance, cybersecurity and resilience costs
$(0.35) billion
Real-estate and vendor consolidation savings
$0.20 billion
Net recurring annual savings
$3.58 billion
UBS reported 99,085 internal FTEs, $14.96 billion of personnel expense for the first half of 2026 and an underlying cost/income ratio of approximately 70%. A $3.4–$3.6 billion reduction would lower annualized personnel and related expenses by roughly 11% and could reduce the cost/income ratio by approximately six percentage points to around 64%, assuming constant revenue.
Estimated implementation costs would be approximately $4.4 billion:
The program would reach full savings by 2030, break even approximately 3.5 years after launch and generate an estimated seven-year NPV of roughly $7 billion at a 10% discount rate. Once fully implemented, annual after-tax earnings could increase by approximately $2.7 billion.
UBS could not legally or commercially relocate everything. The following would remain in relevant markets:
FINMA, PRA and FINRA rules allow extensive outsourcing but leave UBS responsible for supervision, audit access, data security, continuity and regulatory compliance.
Swiss imposed Capital requirements are not high enough to punish UBS bad behavior and heavy offshoring
All Asian all hands tomorrow at 9 pm on the 6th floor break area to discuss their options, including paying the $100k out of pocket to UBS
Congrats on Asian!
UBS likely creates 4 year clawbacks that if you voluntarily leave prior to 4 years being up you have to give back at least $100k in bonuses to refund their H1B fee
UBS should just copy the Gulf States and safeguard passports (wouldn’t want them getting lost during the 120 hour workweek)
UBS fucked over the American 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, 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 based on citizenship status with non Americans explicitly favored over Americans, which carried over to future promotion timelines :)
I heard some deferred analysts legitimately became farmers to make a living while waiting for their start date, UBS has no shame
If they are willing to do this an offer from them means nothing. Don’t feel bad about renegging
Why would a bank target giving half of the analyst and MBA positions to non Americans when these are entry level jobs with thousands of applicants?
Because having a workforce of indians with thick accents is a winning strategy in US m&a, particularly with huge money being spent on infra, defense tech and space. All those companies love Indian m&a advisors!
It’s the Indians who make it to the management levels and heavily discriminate against Americans and only hire H1B.
Congrats on M&A!
ngl if this goes through and creates the hottest lateral market of all time I will vote Trump-affiliated R for the rest of my life I don't care
Nothing ever happens. No mass deportations, no ending H1B, no ending illegal immigration.
Trump (10 years ago) in 2016: “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”
Guess what? He didn’t do shit on immigration. He’s never gonna do shit.
He did make $1B of dumping his crypto and NFTs on bagholding suckers though!
There is 0 intent for this to get upheld. Trump doesn't want to hurt businesses that rely on H1b. He's just pandering to his base. If it were likely to be upheld, he'd pull it.
ICE raid on EMA to get rid of hundreds of H1Bs there? Yes please
This is only for new applicants, everyone at UBS now will be fine. Congrats on hating immigrants!
Ignore Title (Currently AN1 at BB as an international grad)
Blatant racism and inaccuracy. UBS barely sponsors at the entry level for incoming new grads and have been clamping down considerably, with most BBs and EBs following suit. (Most UBS job postings during my recruiting cycle clearly said no on sponsorship)
Sad to see that you're attributing your mediocrity to a group of people who have to work thrice as hard just to be able to afford the same opportunities as you.
Pure Cope.
America is for Americans
dude what's this anti-immigrant hysteria. You are not a redneck earning 40k$, god damn it, you supposedly should understand economy if you are a banker. immigrants generate 25% of US patents, your grandad probably was an immigrant. Any hard-working person in good health with capital and skills is a net benefit to US human capital, economy, consumer spending, cultural influence, tax base. And On average for international to compete with American, he/she needs to be much better than American as Americans possess structural advantages with their cultural fluency and self-presentation skills.
America was a nation founded by immigrants
Lmao the whole reason why internationals get hired on OPT/H1B is not because they’re better. It’s because employers have leverage over an employee who is now dependent on their employment to remain in the country.
It allows employers to push those workers far more than local employees because essentially they have more leverage over them. It's a very ugly system. We need to get rid of it.
that's maybe the case for chill industries where locals are accustomed to work 40 hours and refuse to work more whereas internationals agree to do it; but for IB its not the case - everybody works like mule there.
Most internationals at ubs use a cpt visa, they are taking college classes and granted temporary work authorization. It's a total scam. Stephen Miller actually basically cancelled the program this month so I hope it has a huge effect.
My UBS bullpen has a large group that speak Chinese to talk bad about people in group while in the bullpen and only socialize or talk to their own Chinese group
Congrats on UBS fig or m&a
Does nobody have work to do? This UBS hardon is weird. Go touch grass and talk to a woman (after a haircut and shower. Bonus points if you don't lean on where you work to get laid).
To the dumbass thinking of coming back with *congrats on UBS!, it was funny the first 3,000 times.
Congrats on UBS!
SB'd lol. I set myself up for that one.
Edit
As AI reduces the need for white collar labor, it is critical that the US government deport / denaturalize recent immigrants so that americans can keep / find high paying jobs.
The days of labor shortages, outside of a few specialized areas of which IB is not one, are over with AI.
Without actions to tighten the labor market, the unemployment rate will become intolerably high in the coming years, and there will be increased motivation for deportations and, if a democrat wins the next election, potentially UBI.
Outside the job market, letting too many immigrants in also raises inflation of housing, energy, healthcare, and everything else. Part of the reason inflation was so high during Biden as people were coming in legally and illegally by the millions.
I don't care about Dems or Reps, but I hate when people twist economic facts. Inflation was high during Biden's term because of Quantitative Easing, when the Fed printed trillions. And it happened all over the world, not just in the USA, so it had nothing to do with immigrants.
People say the unemployment rate will become intolerably high, the same was said by the person who sold ice when the refrigerator was invented, or the horse-cab owner when railways were invented. Jobs come and go. 100 years ago, accounting departments employed 10x more people, but with the advent of computers, that number was reduced. Did we get mass unemployment? No, when the cost of doing something reduces, demand explodes. Employment in finance and commerce has exploded since then.
And also - US is not Hong-Kong it has ample land! Its density is actually the lowest among developed countries. The only reason why housing is expensive is due to stupid zoning laws, rent freeze, bureaucracy and other idiotic things.
Houston Metro area added 700k people in last 5 years, growing its population by 10%. Its prices grew less than New York metro area where population actually declined. Housing price has everything to do with regulations and little to do with population. Population only starts matter only when u reach Singapore or Hong-Kong level density with 30k people over square mile which will never happen in USA
I guess this forum just loves huge government intervention in everything as long as it supposedly benefits them.
The Jevons Paradox thing atm is just cope
“Immigrants depress wages and raise housing costs!”
God I love seeing bankers demonstrate 0 empiricism. Justifies our pod’s decision to just hire out of school now
This is the most retarded comment on the site.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike immigration, particularly social, but if you genuinely believe the reasons you stated then you are cooked.
The country benefits from mass economies of scale. The entire economy is built for scale, massively reducing the population suddenly would lead to fewer high paid jobs per capita.
You’d also need a supermajority to denaturalise citizens, given this is unconstitutional on a mass scale. It’s not something the admin can just do lol.
I don’t know if it’s Covid, the sellside or AI but this generation is actually hands in feet retarded. Astounding stuff. And they wonder why large hedge funds will still pay the 100k for internationals
How come nobody talks about one very specific example of how it shortchanges Americans? Rather than an Indian contractor team, the research department hires Americans as CONTRACTORS through a third party staffing agency, pays them sometimes lower for the exact same job functions, promotes them slower, limits their client interactions and makes them jump through hurdles to get converted full-time, and gets insane leverage over them under the pretext of headcount shortage because of the integration. But afaik this practice dates back even before the merger. I’m talking Americans who are fully capable with the same backgrounds as everyone else, went through the standard hiring process, not the contracting agency hiring process, working for a top ranked senior analyst and somehow talked into working as contractors “because there’s a headcount situation”. By any estimate ~1/4 of the floor is staffed by American contractors
Congrats on UBI!
Sangdeep SEND THE MODEL!!!
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