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UBS to announce more job cuts soon
Sun, Apr 12, 2009
Reuters

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS will announce more job cuts soon, with staff in Switzerland and departments like marketing to be hit hard, newspapers reported on Sunday.

Citing several unnamed sources, the Sonntagszeitung newspaper said managers had already started telling their staff about job losses, with departments like marketing and support functions hardest hit.

NZZ am Sonntag said Switzerland would also be hit hard this time, with job cuts among the 26,400 due to be announced on April 22, unnamed sources said.

Swiss newspaper Sonntag said last month that the world's largest wealth manager in terms of assets would cut a further 8,000 jobs.

The bank, one of Europe's hardest hit in the financial crisis, has already announced plans to cut more than 10 percent of its workforce to bring the total staff down to about 75,000 this year.

Oswald Gruebel, a former Credit Suisse boss brought out of retirement by UBS in February as new chief executive, has already signaled that further cost cuts would be inevitable.

Gruebel will address his first UBS shareholders meeting on Wednesday.

The NZZ am Sonntag newspaper said up to a third of staff could go in departments like marketing, while the head of a team catering for institutional investors had been told to cut 15-25 percent of his team.

The head of U.S. wealth management informed his 19,000 staff about planned job cuts last week, although it was not clear how many positions were to go, both newspapers reported.

Sonntagszeitung said client advisors with few clients would go in both the United States and Switzerland.

Gruebel also told a UBS staff meeting in Frankfurt that business flights, lunch, training and taxi costs were banned, the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper said.

Denise Chervet, general secretary of the Swiss banking personnel association, told Sonntagzeitung UBS could make cuts in all departments, with the worst-case scenario more than 10,000 jobs to go, although Gruebel realized the population would not support that.

Earlier this month, Gruebel brought in a former Credit Suisse colleague, Ulrich Koerner, as new UBS chief operating officer and said he would centralize group-wide units to cut costs.

 

 
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