10,000 jobs go in global UBS cull

Swiss financial services giant UBS is to cut 10,000 jobs from its global workforce over the next three years in a bid to cut costs by around €4.5bn.

Irish jobs will not be affected.

The cost reduction — which starts immediately — will be on UBS’ core investment banking and wealth management businesses. Some 2,500 jobs are set to go at headquartered operations in Zurich, with the majority of the remainder in Britain and the US. In all, UBS’ total workforce will drop from 64,000 to 54,000 between now and the end of 2015.

By that time, UBS hopes to have achieved total savings of 5.4bn Swiss francs (€4.5bn) — comprising 2bn Swiss francs of spending cuts and 3.4bn Swiss francs in savings from headcount reductions. In Ireland, UBS employs 60 people in its Dublin-based life assurance business, a non-core asset.

UBS published third quarter figures yesterday showing a net loss of over 2.17bn Swiss francs for the three months to the end of September.

The latest quarter showed a pre-tax profit of $230m (€177.5m) for the US-based wealth management division (up from $211m in the second quarter); but a significant quarterly widening of pre-tax losses in the investment banking arm; going from 130m Swiss francs to 2.9bn Swiss francs.