UBS Mass Layoffs of ~20% of Bank to Hit targets
UBS headcount target was set at 85,000 post merger and they are hovering around 105,000 based on public reports. Approaching layoffs appear to be most significant to date.
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Career Resources
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/ubs-new-wave-of-redundancies-in-mi…
Music to shareholders ears
Can confirm, have heard it will be brutal
are they laying off first and second years?
Will layoffs target Americans over H1Bs?
rumor they are targeting first years with the belief they have overhired given AI and have lower severance costs getting rid of those with less tenure
When will timing be?
Initial discussions ongoing with lists finalized January
Financial reporter lurking here. Would love to speak with you confidentially if you're open to it. I'm nwolf.32 on Signal or can provide an email.
Sabine that a company up 50% in the stock market does layoffs. Corporate greed
*Asinine
Marco when?
Can we volunteer?
Talk to your group gead
Talk to your group head
I know of multiple people that asked to get RIFd. They always do it. VP on my team did it last month.
Never quit, you must monetize your position.
Over the last ~18 months, how long has UBS not been the primary topic of convo in this forum? Why is this forum so obsessed with this single firm? Am I the only non UBS employee on this forum? Did UBS shoot your dog or something, you guys are so rabid in your hatred that it's insane.
The UBS bull strikes again!
Whos this one guy who always makes this comment? Must be a Marco stooge. Go away Tanner.
Well when the second most important person in NY TMT is 29… you are about to get wrecked
I have no affilation with UBS nor have I ever worked there. Who is Tanner, is that the UBS person your gf cheated on you with or something? Seriously don't understand why/how this forum is obsessed with a single bank so much.
Marco better be RIFd in this upcoming round or my faith in the the firm will be totally lost. Heads of TMT should also be gone for sure.
If they chop Marco they probably will get rid of most of the Barclays MDs at the same time. Only reason no Barclays MDs been fired yet is because Marco shields his people over everyone else
I’m fairly sure TMT has more new hires than closed M&A deals in the last couple years. They can’t even do 1 deal per MD per year. Sad!
I dont think either Tech or M&T has closed a significant sell side in years. The team can only clip financings / buy sides. No real experience for juniors.
Recent lack of solid exits speaks to this underperformance
Too real
Not at UBS, but do Tech banking. Pretty sure I have seen UBS Tech on processes as buyside bank. I know they were on the TPG - Conservice deal recently on the buyside for example. I haven't seen them on sell-sides though. It seems like another tier 3 large-cap Tech platform.
Tier 4****
UBS isnt a BB in the US.
Am US based. Tiering is subjective. Tier 3 is basically the banks that do a bunch of buyside work for sponsors in hopes of getting fees, which is how I think of UBS since I only see them as buyside advisors never as sell-sides. Tier 1 is those who do a lot of the sell-sides and tier 2s are those that sometimes do sellsides. Tier 4 IMO is people who don't do either.
They weren’t even alone on the buyside. They can’t really do anything except provide debt financing
Most of the sponsor buysides have multiple advisors. I seriously doubt Union Square is ever getting any large-cap lead buyside advisor mandates no offense to them. I am curious as to how you and people here are so confident as to how these groups are doing with when it seems like you guys are not in them.
What do you expect when you are led by two mumbling fools
redundancy is a cancer to p&l.
ubs absorbed a massive failing entity. cutting 20% is not cruel, it is just integration.
lesson for the juniors:
you are an expense line item until you become a revenue generator.
the only way to hedge against this risk is to own the equity.
if you get fired but your stock portfolio goes up 5% on the news, you still win.
play both sides
Congrats on UBS!
From an analyst’s perspective, the reported plan for UBS to reduce headcount by roughly 20% should be understood less as a sign of stress and more as the inevitable follow-through of its post-merger strategy. The group set a medium-term target of around 85,000 employees after absorbing Credit Suisse, yet public disclosures suggest it is still operating closer to 105,000, making a material reduction unavoidable if cost synergies are to be credibly delivered. This move also fits squarely with current industry dynamics: capital markets activity remains structurally softer than in the pre-2022 cycle, banks are under pressure to improve ROE and reduce RWA intensity, and advances in automation and AI have lowered the execution risk of running leaner platforms. In that context, the scale of the layoffs is notable, but not surprising. For markets, the more important question is not the headline percentage, but whether the cuts are concentrated in overlapping and non-core functions rather than revenue-critical franchises. If executed with discipline, the reductions are more likely to be read as balance-sheet and cost-base normalization than as a deterioration in UBS’s underlying business outlook.
This comment is why companies have such high hopes for AI and "leaner platforms".
How would the O'Connor sale play into this? Does any headcount reduction from that get counted?
A couple hundred employees max, doesn’t make a difference
Thanks. Just looked into O'Connor headcount and didn't realize it was that small relative to the rest of the firm
Is all of this also applicable to the TMT team in Europe? Talking about Christian's realm. They seem to have done relatively well from an outside perspective.
Europe is the only reason they can even sniff at a deal (and try to take EMEA’s credit for the Americas)
Christian and his team are solid. Most of the biggest telecom wins are because of him, and Americas MnT tries to take credit for execution even though they add no value
After having worked at a few other IBs, you quickly come to realize that UBS is at best a 2nd rate organization, and is generally below average competence in all aspects of banking.
Their books are mediocre at best, ideas are boilerplate, juniors and seniors alike mid to below mid. Win rate for deals is very low, and most deals they do win are low quality and unlikely to close
bro i just applied for SA27
Wow you have so much of your career invested in UBS. I hope they end up fine so your life doesn't come crashing down.
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