On Monday, returning chief executive Sergio Ermotti reported what he hopes will be the last set of standalone UBS results before the rescue takeover of Credit Suisse closes.
If the transaction agreed in March, which was heavily criticized by Swiss parliamentarians in April, gets across the finish line in May, then the next report for financials to the end of June will be of revenues and costs for the two banks combined.
Ermotti described the underlying performance of UBS in the first quarter as “solid”.
It was certainly better than at Credit Suisse, which saw outflows of SFr61 billion ($68.5 billion) of client assets in the first quarter, after losing SFr110 billion in the final quarter of 2022.
It now has assets under management 19% lower than at this point one year ago. Credit Suisse confirmed that, as of Monday, outflows had “moderated but not reversed”.
By contrast, the global wealth management business at UBS pulled in $28 billion of net new assets over the first three months of 2023, $7 billion coming in the last 10 days of March, after the announcement of the Credit Suisse acquisition.
Credit Suisse doesn’t have a monopoly on expensive misdeeds still being paid for years after the event
Deposits in that business fell by 5%, mostly because clients, especially in the US, are shifting into higher-returning Treasury bills and money-market funds, often on the advice of their UBS relationship managers.
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