No other wealth manager comes close to competing with UBS for this award. Again, the Swiss banking giant demonstrated its commitment to the region. During the awards period, it relocated its Dubai office to the heart of the Emirate’s financial district and opened a new wealth management office in Doha. UBS aims to hire about 20 people in Qatar by the end of 2020, but it has already made its biggest personnel move, bringing Tarek Eido from HSBC to oversee its onshore wealth business. Eido will report to head of wealth management, Middle East and Africa, Ali Janoudi.
It is UBS’s ability to plan ahead that really stands out. Last year was a good one as it found new ways to help clients profit from market turmoil. UBS reckons regional assets under management grew 26% year on year in 2020, even as it trimmed its cost-to-income ratio by three percentage points. Pre-tax profit rose 3% on an annualized basis to $957 million, with net interest income up 14% over the period.
Global ideas implemented in the region are seized on by high net-worth clients, such as UBS Manage Advanced, which crunches data to build bespoke discretionary solutions. Launched in Switzerland last year, the offering secured $3 billion in sales by the end of March 2021, with sales tripling in the Middle East in the first quarter of the year.
The bank’s Investor Watch events, which focus on the lives of high net-worth clients, have been a huge hit and thousands tuned in last year in to view special ElectionWatch panels ahead of the US presidential election. Last year the bank’s global family office (GFO) division, which pools its investment banking and wealth management teams to deliver institutional-style services to its wealthiest and most sophisticated clients, created its first standalone GFO team in Dubai. It’s another sign of how the wealth industry is growing in the region and how UBS consistently remains ahead of the pack.
