Wealth management company UBS has started cutting jobs from its Asia private banking division after recording lower profits from Q4 2023.
About 70 people are reportedly affected by the move, with Hong Kong and Singapore being the “hardest hit areas”.
Source: HDR
Some of the retrenched employees include bankers from Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired last March.
An unidentified employee affected by the lay-off told Bloomberg that UBS Group started laying off employees this week.
The move mainly affected employees in Hong Kong and Singapore, with about 70 of them being axed.
Source: UBS
Staff affected by the move reportedly include relationship managers and account managers.
Trading platform MooMoo reported that affected employees include bankers from Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired last March.
The layoffs came after UBS Asia Pacific (APAC) announced pretax profits of US$97 million (S$129.2 million) for Q4 2023 — a year-on-year drop of 46%.
Bloomberg added that UBS APAC’s performance was “the lowest of all the regions globally”.
According to Finnews.asia, this was driven by the “consolidation of Credit Suisse revenues”.
UBS operations in APAC also saw its cost-to-income ratio increase from 69.7% in Q4 2022 to 87.7% in Q4 2023, noted Finnews.asia in a separate report.
MS News has reached out to UBS Group to confirm the lay-off and for more information about the impact on employees based in Singapore.
Last month, rumours emerged that UBS Group was looking at cutting 90 jobs from its wealth and banking teams in Asia, reported The Straits Times (ST).
The figure was not finalised then as the bank expected “voluntary departures” following bonus payouts.
UBS isn’t the only bank to lay off employees from the the APAC region.
In Jan 2024, unnamed sources told Reuters that Citigroup was planning on laying off 20 equity researchers in APAC as part of a global overhaul.
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Featured image adapted from HDR.
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