Awards for Excellence 2002

There's nothing like a good piece of news management. UBS had the chance to show its skills with its handling of Markus Granziol's departure.

Two years ago the asset management division of UBS was facing an uncertain future. With figureheads Gary Brinson and Tony Dye gone it was time for new faces to take the lead. As value investing has come back into favour, performance has turned around and now UBS has done the logical thing, uniting the operation under one banner. Where next for UBS Global Asset Management?

Issuer: Diversified Global Securities Limited (UBS Principal Finance)Type of deal: Cashflow arbitrage CDO of CDOsAmount: $236.95 millionDate: December 13 2001Underwriter: Société Générale

An overpromoted investment banker who should never have been doing the job in the first place? Or a gifted and articulate, internationally minded manager leading the drive for transparency and shareholder value?

The world’s most improved equity house

The merged UBS found itself with two brand name asset managers: Brinson Partners and Phillips & Drew. Trouble was both were performing badly looking for value in markets that only rewarded growth. Investors lost their patience and finally star managers Gary Brinson and Tony Dye quit. Where do they go from here? UBS is merging the operations but keeping the names. The philosophy also stays on a bet that the pendulum has swung back and value investing will again produce results. Julian Marshall examines the chances

Few other areas of international finance have been as disaster-strewn in recent years as equity derivatives. A succession of investment banks, including UBS, NatWest, and Bankers Trust, have been spectacularly blown up. And last year there were widespread losses after a European retail boom in guaranteed products left dealers short of volatility. But still newcomers are queuing to join the market. Marcus Walker asks the elite players how they adapt and survive.

When Meriwether invited Union Bank of Switzerland to eat a special dish with him at high table, it seemed too good to be true. It was. Why did a bunch of Swiss bankers rush in where the rest of Wall Street feared to tread? By David Shirreff.

Is Mathis Cabiallavetta the Othello of the financial markets - a man who loved "not wisely but too well"? Dirk Schütz, author of the first history of the SBC/UBS merger, (Der Fall der UBS published by Bilanz), certainly blames Cab's loyalty for the quality of people he collected round him as he rose to the top of UBS.

After spending four months trying to hammer out project-finance strategy at the new UBS/SBC, Chuck Zabriskie, global head of the business at UBS, thought he'd finally struck a deal with the SBC-dominated board. He had, colleagues say, managed to retain his business structures and staff numbers, even though SBC pulled out of project finance three years ago. It looked like a small victory for the demoralized UBS footsoldiers.

Swashbuckling Swiss Bank Corp is plundering Union Bank of Switzerland as if it were a captured Spanish galleon. But is it taking the right people? And has UBS got something to teach the number-crunchers about relationship banking? David Shirreff reports.

Awards for Excellence 1997

What's the fastest way to the top of the international fixed-income ladder? Try a senior managerial stint at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York.

Union Bank of Switzerland and Deutsche Bank are focusing on cracking the US market in their plans to become truly global investment banks. With a stable of expensive Wall Street talent on board, their willingness to commit time and money to establishing a US presence is already starting to pay off. Michelle Celarier reports

Grand Hotel Baur au Lac, Zurich, Switzerland

After months of delays, the New York Federal Reserve Bank is close to approving Swiss Bank Corp's merger with SG Warburg in the US. But there will be a lot less left to merge than originally expected. Uncertainty about the future of the US piece of Warburg, combined with a post-integration reorganization at SBC Warburg, has led to an exodus of investment bankers and analysts in New York.

Did Nikolaus Senn, chairman of the embattled Union Bank of Switzerland, seize a merger proposal from CS chairman Rainer Gut and use it as a crude weapon against his bitterest enemy and major shareholder Martin Ebner? Here's the story whose climax a third of all Zurich inhabitants watched on television. But will it have a happy ending? And who pairs off with whom? David Shirreff reports

There could scarcely be a greater contrast: in the financial heart of Zurich, in restrained classical grandeur, Credit Suisse and Union Bank of Switzerland make the Bahnhofstrasse neighbourhood still more stately--and in obscure back streets lurk their foreign competitors.

It was like the meeting of two big and powerful families, the Medici and the Strozzi in Florence, or the Gambinos and the Bonannos in New York. But this was April 22, 1986.

When Armin Mattle of UBS made Stanley Ross run for cover, it was a sign of just how unpopular the grey market had become.