UBS has taken advantage of the turmoil in the investment banking industry to poach two blue-chip clients from its broking rivals.
BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, recently hired the Swiss bank to be its retained adviser alongside Citigroup. UBS replaced Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Coca-Cola HBC, the £5bn bottling company that joined the London Stock Exchange three years ago, dropped JP Morgan in favour of UBS.
Corporate broking is a very British tradition. Banks act as advisers to companies for little or no compensation in the hope they will earn large fees when those companies need to raise money to do deals.
The wins pushed UBS’s roster of FTSE 100 broking clients back up to 23 after it lost BAE Systems and Smith & Nephew last year.
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Like its rivals, the bank has been hit hard by dramatic changes to the traditional investment banking model. Regulators now require higher levels of capital to be held in reserve, and have levied tens of billions of dollars in fines for past misdeeds. Meanwhile, once-lucrative fixed-income trading has been curbed.
Last month, UBS reported a 20% drop in investment bank profits to 223m Swiss francs (£158m) and temporarily froze salaries. But the bank has fared better recently than rivals. Deutsche Bank, Barclays and Credit Suisse have all unveiled sweeping restructuring plans under which they will sell divisions and slash tens of thousands of jobs.
UBS declined to comment.