A tipster hints that UBS, having now effectively gelded Investment Banking compensation but has not done much to the other units, in particular, Wealth Management. The story goes that UBS has been escrowing IB bonuses for some time, since they only pay once a year, and that while many of these are contractually guaranteed, a long sitskrieg between the Swiss monster and its employees, who are unlikely to quit until paid, has begun. UBS is sort of stuck in a political bind. Paying bonuses would be politically explosive (the Swiss National Bank is shareholder) but they are contractually committed to do so. Ouch.
One would think that UBS would just sell the Investment Bank if they wanted to be rid of it, but given the market, that might not be a viable alternative. So is it better to let the IB wither of its own accord?
At the same time, we are told, but cannot confirm, that UBS is on a Wealth Management hiring spree. This would make some sense, given the degree to which this unit has grown, and the fact that, certain tax evasion indiscretions that we pretty much expect of the Swiss aside, it has mostly kept its nose clean. It would, however, seem to conflict with the public appearance that the bank is suffering. Perhaps it would be better to say the investment bank, now quarantined like an Ebola patient, is suffering?
What the hell is going on over there at UBS anyway?
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- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
U B Sucks
Useless Bank of Shit
I’d rather stay unemployed than work for that $hit hole. Doesn’t stop recruiters from offering positions there over and over again.
UBS > Credit Suisse
I UBS’d my car last night. The body-repair work alone will set me back 10 grand.
ubs has hired every coverage guy we had in their ultra hi net worth group (from Morgan stanley, Citi/SB, Credit Suisse, Lehman, deutsche, etc.). i’ve heard they are paying big upfront multiples of revenue. i’m sure it will work out well for them, like every other aggressive expansion they’ve pursued.
@1-5 – your comments sure are useful. go back to posting on yahoo finance in between emailing out your resume
@6: I don’t understand. You are buy-side and they hired away your salesguys to cover other buy-side institutions, or you are HNW and they hired everyone who covered your (multiple) accounts?
@1 you always beat me to it. UBS does suck. Bigtime. I enjoy watching their demise. Adios, f’ers.
Getting shitcanned by you was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn’t know it then. But without you twisting that swiss-made knife in my back, i never wouldv’e had the beautiful life i have now.
@7
You assume to much! unsurprising for someone from UBS. Go back to your desk so your manager can take a giant shit all over you.
@ 9. Amen.
@10 – wouldn’t 7 already be at his desk if posting. idiot
“Gramm is a vice-chairman of UBS Investment Bank, a financial services company, and massive benefactor from Gramm’s financial positions while he was in the Senate, based in Switzerland.”
Phil Gramm was probably benefacted enough to bail them out.
kenny m must love that shit
wealth management is retail brokerage – that’s a permanently acquisitive biz
it works like this
hire anyone…if they are good, they produce, if not they bring their accounts and then we bleed them (by paying out at 30%) and let them die on the vine, and keep their accounts…furthermore, any of these upfront bonuses to acquirie (like 100% trailing revs) is actually a loan, that has to be paid back if you leave prior (which you will if you suck) and is amortized on ubs books accordingly
fuck doesn’t everyone know that?
seems like they are letting it die, why pay severance when you can just make everyone quit with the stellar conditions
Gramm is a huge scumbag
working with UBS IBD on a deal, and I can that they suck a huge donkey dick…utterly worthless.
Enron, Republican Party popularity, UBS….why does Phil Gramm’s name turn up every time a turd makes an aroma?
@17 telecom, i betcha
too non-drug related, didn’t hallucinate.
@ 20. How is that remotely clever??
@21..think the title sucked 20 in
I know some of the “wealth managers” the Big Suck has hired. Paying for Merrill Trash? I mean some of THE biggest dirt bag, Bernie Madoffs in trainig and these morons are paying these retail hacks to come join them. Go figure – UBS has made institutional tax evasion an art form. Now they got the stormtroopers.
@21 – Same goes for you and us.
@14 is 100% correct. UBS doesn’t fire FA’s just screws ‘em w/ trailing
250% of trailing 12 mo revs (or best 12 out of 18 mo’s rev).
It is a loan but often ends in arbitration with fav settlement.
Good way to replenish at their expense.
Lets not forget that “UBS Wealth Management” is PaineWebber. Classic old retail brokerage crap. Whenever the makret craps out and these banks cant make money with institutional money or their crazy synthetic products they try to pump up retail brokerage and take advantage of the average joe through their retail sales force.
There is no real money or talent in “Wealth Management” it’s a joke but if you buy enough run of the mill brokers and get them to bring their accounts maybe it helps pump up AUM of the overall entity.
Bottom line Wealth Management/Retail is lowest on the food chain at any firm. No talent, no skills, usually no education. They may as well be selling Vaccuum cleaners!
It is astonishing how Wall Street rushes en masse to a business area, goes over the cliff, then rushes into another area, etc. etc.
Forget the punch bowl being taken away, these guys have crashed the table the punch bowl was on, gone through the wall, and are out in the parking lot headed towards the creek.
@28
In the case of UBS, not a creek, more like Long Island sound.
Quite appropriate actually. They’ll swim with the rest of the toxic pollution.
27 = Dylan Ratigan
real conversation overheard @ UBS. FA says, “I’ll never again invest in anything I don’t understand.” after one of the hedgies imploded. Wasn’t that one of the concepts on the serires 63? U of C grad. too.
@28
douche
wall st is toll collecting…how else do you suggest they go about their biz, besides chasing the market?
Too Swiss. Boring.
This post was about the BofA cup debacle. It is too damn funny to be lost in yesterdays chatter. Enjoy.
Here is the problem. OBP needs some rain or snow on the roof to fill the water tanks. So if we get a good snow storm today and it warms up on Sunday the melting snow should provide enough run off for a few good turds. So keep the fiber intake down today and see if you can’t keep that turtle head from dropping until you get home tonight if you work at OBP.
I know this goes against the “green machine” mentality of BofA, but you may want to invest in some adult diapers. Strap on some Depends and get to work with no potty breaks. Show your manager that you are commited and working hard for your 2010 1/3 stock bonus which should be vested in five years with clawbacks if the bank tanks.
Maybe the answer is reusable adult diapers. Better for the environment and it solves the loo problem at OBP. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. Box? How about litter boxes? Another great idea. Put litter boxes in OBP bathrooms. If a cat can shat in a box why can’t a banker?
UBS is like the anti-philosopher’s stone, where it turns gold into crap.
Any bank that would hire Phil Graham is a great big Swiss Whore. Take a look at that dude and tell me he isn’t the product of generations upon generations of inbreeding. I believe he said while he was McCain’s econ adviser that the e3conomy was actually doing great any problems that existed were only mental and that America is a nation of whiners. Last part is true but has nothing to do with the economy. But then again, our friend got his PhD at Texas A&M – guess he didn’t like the classes on cow tipping. Freakin Retard
Us & Us
@28 OOOHH YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!
- the Koolaid Guy
Well. UBS maybe not be the best company. However, unlike many other companies like Bear, Lehman, ML,WAMU and so on… who lost less money then UBS does not exist anymore but UBS was able to make some changes and as I see by working at WM in 2009 they will be reworded for that…
any truth to “nothing but donuts for USB IBD MDs” rumor?
Great! Le IB eat the dust, they are the true troublemaker.
Great! Le IB eat the dust, they are the true troublemaker.
Great! Le IB eat the dust, they are the true troublemaker.
EP – your writing style has become more tongue-in-cheek and incorporates more funny, kind of esoteric references..like the sitskrieg thing from WW II.
is bess shadow-writing for you? if not, good job!
EP – your writing style has become more tongue-in-cheek and incorporates more funny, kind of esoteric references..like the sitskrieg thing from WW II.
is bess shadow-writing for you? if not, good job!
@35- stop posting about things you know nothin about. Phil Gram has a PhD something I’m sure you would not be able to do- not at Texas A&M and not at any doctoral economics program.
1) advanced undergrad real analysis and topology in the first year, qualifying exams
2) dissertation in a technical topic
I worked there once. Loved it when a well-known MD, speaking to a group of associates, told us “never in the history of the world has a bank had so much positive momentum” – thanks for your optimism Erika, you manipulative windbag.
This company is a mismanaged piece of shit. Senior executives are paid massive sums of money on contract, risk management has their heads up their ass and doesn’t know what the fuck is going on and to add to this clusterfuck of a business structure, the board and employees now have to answer to the Swiss government about how much they should get paid. UBS, how do you expect to attract and retain a talented workforce to sustain your failing franchise if you constantly fuck your employees? You heard it here first, mass exodus of talent out of UBS after 2008 laughable compensation is paid.
UBS is like dresdner with wasserstein a few years back, the Swiss have basically decided IB is not for them.
Barcap, CS will win big as they cherry pick MD’s like Lorello, Sine that bring in 50+m a year, UBS’s tie in with the Swiss Govt will make it more of a slow, sleepy private bank. its tough to take…I have spent 6 years here and in 2007 this felt like the real deal. UBS needs an American ceo, the swiss are not sophisticated enough to bring this thing out of the woods
Did anyone see this account of it? Looks pretty spot on.
http://www.WhatUpAtUBS.blogspot.com
Looks like someone in the know.
by the way, if you know anything about UBS, you know Sine is a clown. He brings in nothing like $50m a year. Not even $5
#49 — thank you
All readers please look at the link on 49 its the best informed piece on the UBS debacle
@49,@51
You’re a fucking idiot
@31. If a UBS FA invested only in things he or she understood, his clients would be perpetually in cash.
@49 – thanks for the interesting read, keep the news coming
You really want to know what’s going on at UBS? Here’s a sampling…
An American that was hired by UBS and was based in Switzerland later became a whistleblower and left the bank.
Before leaving, he excercised his whistleblower rights within the bank, elevating his complaints in writing to the highest ranking executives of UBS, including then-chief legal counsel and present chairman, Peter Kurer. It pertained to the UBS off-shore private banking business for U.S. citizens. This was in 2005.
Kurer claimed that he had investigated the problem but the business continued, as usual. The whistleblower then became an official whistleblower with the United States government: IRS, SEC, Department of Justice and the United States Senate.
This is what has led to the death-match stare down between UBS and the U.S. Government. The U.S. wants the names of the U.S. citizens that have hidden their undeclared accounts from the IRS. The issue is tax evasion. The Swiss government is covering for UBS, even more so after the Swiss government became a 9.3% owner of UBS via the multi-billion franc bailout of UBS last year. Does the phrase “conflict of interest” mean anything to anybody over there?
The chief of UBS private banking, worldwide, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida in November. He never appeared in court to answer the charges and is now officially a fugitive from justice. This person’s subordinate was detained in the U.S. last year and subpoenaed to testify before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Investigations last July. He plead the 5th amendment and refused to testify.
Now I ask you…would you want these guys anywhere within a country mile of your money?
UBS says it’s not up to them to turn over the names of the U.S. account holders and says this is up to the Swiss government. The Swiss government says they can’t turn over the names because of Swiss law and also because the account holders have threatened to sue if the names are turned over.
It’s a classic lose-lose for UBS.
Who’s going to jail?
“You and Us…UBS”.
@55
The name of that fugitive is Raoul Weil. It’s surprising that Bess hasn’t reported this one in the list of financial fraud fugitives.
UBS Confirms Private Banking Head Weil Declared US Fugitive
1-14-09 2:59 AM EST
ZURICH -(Dow Jones)- Swiss bank UBS AG (UBS) Wednesday confirmed its top private banker Raoul Weil has been declared a fugitive in the U.S., but declined to comment further.
Weil was indicted in November for allegedly conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by helping U.S. clients evade taxes. Aaron Marcu, his lawyer, reiterated that Weil plans to fight the indictment. Weil has denied engaging in illegal conduct.
The U.S. move comes ahead of UBS’ fourth-quarter earnings Feb. 10, which will be closely watched for an indication of whether Weil, who runs UBS’ flagship private bank, has been able to stem massive outflows of client funds.
@49 great piece. Keep it coming
@52, why is @49 an idiot? Hit a little close to home? You have one of those contracts maybe and didn’t want the people who work for you to know?!!!
@55 thanks for reprinting 3 weeks of wall street journal coverage we’ve all read. Anything original?