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Tag: Finance

  • UBS Selling Onshore Business in Spain

    UBS Selling Onshore Business in Spain

    Switzerland’s largest bank is giving up its business with its Spanish onshore clients. This follows a similar move in Austria less than a year ago.

    UBS is selling its Spanish office to Singular Bank according to an emailed statement Monday. This comes after months of speculation that many European markets simply aren’t large enough to warrant a presence.

    Without disclosing the deal amount, the Swiss bank writes in its statement that all client assets, as well as the UBS team in Madrid, are included in the transaction. Investment banking and fund sales activities in Spain will remain with UBS.

    The deal is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2022.

    Last December UBS Europe sold its business with Austria’s onshore wealth to Vaduz-based LGT Bank. The Spanish onshore business holds an estimated 9 to 12 billion euros ($9.8 billion to $13 billion) in assets under management.

    The Austrian business managed 4 billion euros in assets at the time it announced the sale. Under its three-year plan for 2021 to 2023, UBS Europe is making staying profitable despite the turbulent economic backdrop its top priority.

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  • UBS Profit Up in Third Quarter

    UBS Profit Up in Third Quarter

    Switzerland’s largest bank reports a rise in quarterly profits. The bank benefited from its business with the super-wealthy and cut its costs.

    UBS’ third-quarter net profit to $2.28 billion in the third quarter, representing a 9 percent on year increase, it said in statement on Tuesday. The bank was able to cut costs to $6.26 billion from $6.36 billion in the same period last year.

    The Swiss bank was cautiously optimistic for the rest of the year citing effects of the pandemic on the economy, supply chains and labor markets. The bank’s flagship business, global wealth management’s pre-tax profit climbed to $1.5 billion from $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2021.

    The investment banking business benefited from strong activity in financial markets this year. Pre-tax profit rose to $837 million from $668 million in the second quarter of 2021.

    A strategic update is scheduled on February 1. The divide between the two Swiss champions has deepened, with UBS stock gaining 14 percent thus far this year while Credit Suisse has shed more than 15 percent.

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  • HSBC Profits Surge From More Released Loan Loss Reserves

    HSBC Profits Surge From More Released Loan Loss Reserves

    A continued reduction of credit loss provisions fuelled HSBC’s pre-tax profits in the third quarter to comfortably beat analyst expectations.

    HSBC registered $5.4 billion of pre-tax profits in the third quarter, according to its latest earnings report, marking a 76 percent year-on-year growth.

    This marked significant outperformance compared to analysts’ forecasts of $3.78 billion, according to compilations from the bank.

    All regions were profitable including Asia which recorded $3.3 billion of pre-tax gains, a 3.6 percent increase.

    Although reported revenue was up just a modest 1 percent to $12 billion, the bank managed to generate strong results through the reduction of loan loss reserves.

    In the third quarter, HSBC made a net release of $700 million in expected credit losses (ECL) compared to an ECL charge of $800 million in the same quarter last year.

    We had a good third-quarter performance, with strong growth in profits supported by additional credit provision releases, said HSBC CEO Noel Quinn. Our strategy remains on track, with good delivery in all areas. This was reflected in more consistent top-line growth, robust lending pipelines across our businesses, and rising trade and mortgage balances.

    The bank also highlighted a sufficiently strong capital position to prepare for share buybacks totaling up to $2 billion.

    While we retain a cautious outlook on the external risk environment, we believe that the lows of recent quarters are behind us, Quinn said. This confidence, together with our strong capital position, enables us to announce a share buyback which we expect to commence shortly.

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  • DBS Appoints Chief Risk Officer

    DBS Appoints Chief Risk Officer

    A career DBS banker has been named chief risk officer for the Singapore lender, replacing Tan Teck Long.

    Soh Kian Tiong has been named chief risk officer (CRO), according to a statement, reporting to DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta.

    In addition, Soh will also be accountable to the board risk management committee as well as join as a member of the group management committee and group executive committee.

    Soh replaces ex-CRO Tan Teck Long who will be leaving the bank to take on a client-facing role elsewhere.

    Soh has over 25 years of experience, having first joined DBS as a trainee officer in its corporate banking unit in 1995. Since then, he held various senior roles, most recently as a senior risk executive for DBS Hong Kong, Greater China chief credit officer, management committee member of DBS (Hong Kong), and Hong Kong risk executive committee chairman.

    Under Tan’s leadership, DBS has further enhanced our credit underwriting capabilities, multi-year credit architecture program, and strengthened our attention on ESG risks, financial crime risk, and cyber security and data protection. While he will be sorely missed, we respect his desire to return to a customer-facing role,» Gupta said.

    Soh’ appointment is testament to our ability to groom leaders from within. Over the span of his longstanding DBS career, he has been rotated across markets, and embraced a mix of business and risk roles. I am confident that he will bring this experience to bear meaningfully in his new role.

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  • Deutsche Bank Adds Greater China Wealth Vet from HSBC

    Deutsche Bank Adds Greater China Wealth Vet from HSBC

    Deutsche Bank has hired a former HSBC executive as a managing director in its wealth management unit.

    Tse Yi-Mun joins Deutsche Bank Wealth Management as a managing director and group head for North Asia, according to a statement.

    Based in Singapore, she reports to North Asia head of wealth management Kanas Chan.

    Tse has 23 years of private banking experience, most recently with HSBC Private Banking where she was its market head for Hong Kong. Previously, she also worked for DBS and ABN AMRO covering the Greater China market.

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  • UBS Strengthens Australasian Equities and Research Unit

    UBS Strengthens Australasian Equities and Research Unit

    UBS has hired four new executives and promoted two others for its equities and research team in Australia and New Zealand. John Storey joins as a banks analyst from J.P. Morgan in South Africa and Richard Schellbach joins from Citi in London as an equity strategist, according to UBS.

    Storey and Schellbach were hired to replace Jonathan Mott who left to join startup bank Barrenjoey Capital Partners and Pieter Stoltz, current head of quantitative strategies at fund manager Eley Griffiths, respectively.

    In the global markets division, UBS also hired Tom Tepaa, who joins the block trading desk from Goldman Sachs in Singapore, and David Nicholson who joins the Australian equity sales team from Citi in Boston.

    In addition to new hires, UBS has also announced two promotions for its New Zealand business.

    Thomas Buchanan will relocate from Hong Kong to become New Zealand head of distribution and Will Becker was named New Zealand head of sales trading for global markets.

    The latest hires follow the exodus from UBS’ investment banking unit dubbed bloody Monday after a flurry of executives left to join Barrenjoey Capital Partners in March.

    After the poaching spree, UBS Australasia co-chief executive Anthony Sweetman vowed to offer top dollar to rebuild the team, boasting that the bank was consistently the higher payer in the industry in an interview and that this would not change for the regional market.

  • VN-Index slips in narrow band

    VN-Index slips in narrow band

    Vietnam’s benchmark VN-Index fell 0.01 percent to 1,395.33 points Tuesday, continuing along with a narrow band near the 1,400-range resistance.

    Last-minute selling pressure pulled the index down by 0.2 point. It has been fluctuating within a three-point margin for the past six sessions, after surging to the 1,390-range on Oct. 11.

    Trading value on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), on which the index is based, fell 14 percent to VND20.34 trillion ($899 million).

    The VN30 basket, comprising the 30 largest capped stocks, saw 17 tickers in the red, led by STB of Ho Chi Minh City-based lender Sacombank with a 2.6 percent drop.

    GAS of state-owned Petrovietnam Gas dropped 1.7 percent after hitting a new peak Monday.

    VRE of retail real estate arm Vincom Retail fell 1.6 percent to the lowest in over a week.

    MSN of conglomerate Masan Group lost 1.4 percent, while HPG of steelmaker Hoa Phat Group fell 1.2 percent.

    Foreign investors were net sellers to the tune of VND470 billion, with the strongest pressure on HPG and VHM of real estate giant Vinhomes.

    The HNX-Index for stocks on the Hanoi Stock Exchange, home to mid and small caps, rose 0.55 percent while the UPCoM-Index for the Unlisted Public Companies Market gained 0.23 percent.

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  • Hong Kong and Macau Announce Wealth Connect Bank List

    Hong Kong and Macau Announce Wealth Connect Bank List

    China’s two special administrative regions announced their list of eligible banks to participate in the cross-border wealth management scheme.

    In Hong Kong, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citi and more were amongst those on the list of 19 approved banks, according to an announcement yesterday from the city’s central bank.

    Three banks – Bank of East Asia, DBS and Dah Sing Bank – were only allowed to sell products via the southbound route.

    Considering that it will be the first time for retail investors to conduct cross-boundary investments, we will closely monitor the operation of the cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect and step up investor education and investor protection work together with the industry, said Hong Kong Monetary Authority chief executive Eddie Yue Wai-man in a statement.

    Concurrently, Macau’s central bank also announced its list of seven lenders approved for the cross-border scheme earlier this week.

    Bank of China, Bank of Communications, China Construction Bank, China Guangfa Bank, CMB Wing Lung Bank, ICBC and Luso International Banking were approved to launch services in the Wealth Connect program as of yesterday, according to the Monetary Authority of Macau. z

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  • UBS Asset Management Appoints Australasia Country Head

    UBS Asset Management Appoints Australasia Country Head

    UBS Asset Management has named a new country head for Australia and New Zealand.

    Alison Telfer has been named to the role, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.

    She has 20 years of asset management experience, most recently with Blackrock where she was its chief operating officer, general counsel, and head of public policy for Australasia.

    Telfer’s strategic mindset coupled with her extensive Asia Pacific asset management experience will be valuable in helping her position UBS Asset Management for the future, said UBS Australasia joint-country head Nick Hughes.

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  • Deutsche Bank Hires Ex-Bank of Singapore MD

    Deutsche Bank Hires Ex-Bank of Singapore MD

    A former managing director from Bank of Singapore has joined Deutsche Bank’s wealth unit in Singapore.

    Deutsche Bank Wealth Management hired Faye Lee as a managing director, according to a statement, tasked with covering ultra-high net worth clients in Southeast Asia.

    Based in Singapore, she joins a team led by Southeast Asia head Shang-Wei Chow and reports to group head of Southeast Asia Terence Leong.

    Lee has over 17 years of wealth management experience, most recently with Bank of Singapore where she was a managing director. Previously, she also worked for ING Asia Private Bank, prior to OCBC’s acquisition in 2009, Citi and HSBC.

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  • StanChart Enters BNPL Space With Atome Investment

    StanChart Enters BNPL Space With Atome Investment

    The bank has entered a 10-year multi-product strategic partnership with Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) brand Atome to deliver a wide range of financial services to consumers and merchants across key markets in Asia.

    The partnership, which aims to deliver mobile-first financial services for consumers across Asia, includes a planned $500 million financing to support Atome Financial to expand its regional ecosystem of merchants and customers.

    The partnership will initially include BNPL services, targeting to roll out in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam in the next few months, and later expand to include digital lending products, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

  • UOB Launches Platform for Energy Efficiency Projects

    UOB Launches Platform for Energy Efficiency Projects

    The platform will be launched first in Singapore, with subsequent roll-outs in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

    UOB is launching an integrated financing platform U-Energy to drive the development and adoption of energy efficiency projects for buildings and homes, as part of its Smart City Sustainable Finance Framework.

    The bank highlighted that buildings and construction projects globally account for 38 percent of carbon emissions and that this is a key area to address to meet Singapore’s target of reducing carbon emissions by 36 percent from the 2005 levels by 2030.

    Building owners, energy service companies, and homeowners can reduce an average of 20 percent in energy consumption by tapping on its green financing for energy efficiency projects under U-Energy, UOB said.

    UOB noted that building owners and homeowners often lack financing support and the expertise to find the right energy service companies.

    At launch, the platform will have nine energy service companies that customers can tap for energy efficiency projects, such as chiller and air conditioning efficiency, installing solar panels on rooftops, switching to LED lights, optimizing energy and power management systems, and changing the building façade to reflect direct sunlight to reduce heat absorption, as well as replacing elevators with energy-regeneration technology.

    UOB previously launched integrated financing platforms for solar energy and electric vehicles under the bank’s Smart City Sustainable Finance Framework

  • Call For Rise in Banking Salaries

    Call For Rise in Banking Salaries

    Bank employee representatives have set their demands for this fall’s wage negotiations. Their objective is to raise salaries at the lower end.

    The Swiss Bank Employees Association is advocating a general wage increase and raise of at least 2.2 percent, or 300 francs a month for bank employees, according to a statement Thursday.

    The call is the outcome of a salary survey among more than 4,000 employees and a meeting of employee representatives in mid-September. The boost would help those on lower wages, in particular, the statement says.

    The association points out that while wages in the banking industry are rising, on the whole, not everyone is seeing the benefit. On an individual level, only 32 percent of respondents got a boost in 2021, down from 37 percent in the last survey.

    Banks were profitable, despite the Covid 19 crisis, and results from this year have continued to be good, with most banks having saved costs from people working from home.

    Next year the association will focus on fair and transparent rules for the wage-setting process.

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  • UBS Partners With Robeco

    UBS Partners With Robeco

    Over the past years there has been some back and forth between UBS and Robeco. Now the two have joined forces to launch a sustainability fund.

    The investment company Robeco has launched a global engagement equities fund in partnership with UBS’ global wealth management, according to a statement Thursday. UBS will remain an exclusive partner for the next six months and aims to invest $1.5 billion.

    The fund has the sustainable investment objective to drive a clear and measurable improvement in a company’s contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over three to five years, the statement says.

    Michiel Plakman is the fund’s lead portfolio manager, supported by Daniela da Costa, Peter van der Werf, Giacomo Moroni and Jan Anton van Zanten at Robeco.

    Robeco is no stranger to UBS: The Swiss bank’s chief sustainability officer Michael Baldinger, was previously CEO of Robeco. Last year UBS teamed up with Zug-based asset management giant Partners Group, on a private market offering for wealthy clients.

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  • UBS Creates ESG Role in Investment Bank

    UBS Creates ESG Role in Investment Bank

    The Swiss bank appoints one of its investment bankers to a key sustainability role.

    Zurich-based UBS is naming Laurent Bouvier to front a new team of investment bankers focused on environmental, social, and governance responsibility, according to a memo seen by finews.com. Bouvier, a managing director, is currently co-head of the global industries group, with Charles Otton.

    Bouvier’s promotion is part of a wider push by UBS and other investment banks to increasingly consider so-called ESG criteria in traditional sectors like industry. Wall Street rivals like Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have already set up similar teams, which first reported Bouvier’s appointment.

    A dealmaking veteran, Bouvier will be joined by Armin Peter and Samantha Sutcliffe, who have devoted themselves to sustainable banking and finance efforts at UBS since 2019. Peter is the global head of debt syndicate and the head of sustainable banking in the European, Middle East, and Africa regions. Sutcliffe is the head of green and sustainable finance.

    Bouvier previously spent more than 16 years at Credit Suisse, also as an MD, before joining UBS in 2015. He will be replaced in his current job by Philippe Chryssicopoulos, who will co-lead the industrials group with Otton.

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