UBS CEO warns staff Credit Suisse ‘is still our competitor’
UBS Group chief executive officer Ralph Hamers has warned staff not to talk about business matters with counterparts at Credit Suisse Group, following the announcement of their government-brokered combination.
“Please remember that, until this deal closes, Credit Suisse is still our competitor,” Hamers wrote in a memo to employees. “We cannot discuss business matters with their employees or take any action that could be interpreted as a step towards the merging of business,” he said.
A spokesperson for UBS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the memo.
Switzerland’s biggest bank is paying 3 billion francs (S$4.35 billion) for Credit Suisse, in a deal UBS chairman Colm Kelleher described as an “emergency rescue”. The plan, negotiated in hastily arranged crisis talks over the weekend, seeks to address client outflows and a massive rout in Credit Suisse’s stock and bonds over the past week following the collapse of smaller US lenders.
Growth ambitions
The combination particularly supports UBS’s growth ambitions in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, Hamers wrote.
“For our UBS Asia-Pacific businesses this is going to differentiate and distance us even further from our competitors, enabling us to scale up and increase our footprint overnight,” the bank’s president for the region Edmund Koh wrote in a separate memo.
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The deal offers an “exciting moment” for UBS, and will help accelerate its strategy and strengthen its wealth management capabilities, Koh wrote. A spokesperson for the bank confirmed the contents of the memo.
The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the year if possible, Credit Suisse said in a statement on Sunday (Mar 19).
Hamers will host a global town hall for staff at 9.00 am CET Monday, the memo said. BLOOMBERG
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