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What happened to UBS's Middle East expansion?
5 May 2009
It's no secret that UBS has been letting go of legions of bankers in Western markets, but it has been waxing lyrical about expanding its Middle Eastern presence for some time now. So how many people has it hired in the region within the last year? Answer: six.
Just to recap, in July last year having secured a licence to operate in Saudi, UBS said it intended to double the number of employees in the Gulf and make a move into Islamic finance.
As recently as March this year, it appointed Armen Papazian to head up its Islamic finance division in Dubai, who has since stated the bank's intention to ramp up in this area. It also hired Per Larsson to lead the investment banking team in the region in July last year .
However, so far recruitment has been thin on the ground. As at 31 March this year, the bank employs 148 people in the Middle East/Africa, up from 145 at the beginning of this year and 142 at the same time in 2008.
Obviously, with UBS announcing ever-increasing horrors with regards to redundancies in European and US markets, any sort of expansion is not to be sniffed at. And it still has until the end of the year to reach the target of 200 full-time staff in the region it highlighted in July 2008.
UBS is looking to reduce its global workforce from 76,206 people at the end of March to 67,500 in 2010, but the Middle East staff should be (slightly) reassured by the fact that performance in both the equities and bonds and rates businesses in the region has been singled out as being particularly strong.
UBS bank has lost so much since the bigining of the financhal problem in terms of good staff and also in terms assts therefore it is facing quite diffcult time to hire new staff plus the reputation of the bank has been down in eyes of most clients
Tariq1962 18 May 2009
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