UBS Wealth Management to remain on top?

I was wondering how UBS' problems in the subprime fiasco will hurt its Wealth Management Business. The investment bank has obviously seen major downsizing and the future strength of the Investment Bank doesn't look too hot. UBS has openly stated that they will focus on sustaining the crown jewel of their empire - Wealth Management.

On the other hand, many reports have stated that high net-worth investors have become disgruntled with the bank as a whole and have pulled out tens of billions from their accounts.

Will UBS remain the #1 Wealth Manager in the world for long?

Reason I ask is a close contact has a FT offer in IBD at a BB, but has decided he wants to pursue PWM instead for the long-term (very outgoing guy). He has offers at UBS, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan all for wealth management. He was leaning towards UBS, but with the uncertainty it is tough to know what to expect.

Should I recommend accepting UBS for their current #1 rank even with future uncertainty, or Goldman Sachs for the name and job safety, but unestablished Wealth Management business (future growth?) or JPM?

 
Best Response

UBS is the best and largest wealth manager in the world, by quite a distance according to many reports issued by Scorpio and other firms.

Contrarily, Bessemer's Trust and Goldman Sachs were voted most prestigious by the Luxury Institute that compiled a survey of ultra high net-worth individuals.

With Goldman Sachs, sure you get the name, prestige etc. but Goldman Sachs is not well established at all in Wealth Management. Wealth Management has been a business of Swiss expertise, hence UBS is the leader and apparently Credit Suisse is making a strong push into Wealth Management.

If he ends up doing a great job, UBS' strength could play in his favor over working in Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs I presume?

At the same time I don't know if we should believe UBS when it says it will work to preserve the success of its Wealth Management business.

I guess I should recommend Goldman in this instance for the name, prestige, job security and future growth over the top ranked UBS who's future strength in investment banking and possibly in Wealth Management remain uncertain?

 

Goldman does have a fame for treating its clients like crap and not standing for their clients' interests.. for example, they will insist on selling products/investments that will reap the highest commissions, not the best performance/value to their customers

UBS does have a fame of having a very open infrastructure where they don't "push" products to their clients... they'd rather have the client make questions about increasing their returns and work from there. they're most definitely there to maintain a client relationship and not so much to make loads of money on the commission

i would tell your friend to look into the culture and see what fits best w/ him. i know people who have left goldman mainly because they could not stand the pressure to push bad high-commission products, so that could be an issue. but maybe not doing any pushing at all with ubs could also be an issue to his wallet/outgoing personality

 

What happened to UBS in the last year has happened to them before. Back then they were also committing themselves to never let the investment bank get into the way of wealth mgmt, yadda yadda.. In my opinion its just the financial cycle. UBS wealth mgmt has done nothing wrong and the long term fundamentals for them are positive. Any adverse effects on their image by the current crisis will likely resolve themselves over the next 12-24 months.

 

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