The bad UBS jobs news:
The Investment Bank expects to employ around 19,000 people at the end of 2008. This will require a reduction of up to 2,600, of which the large majority will be redundancies. In the other business groups, personnel numbers will be reduced mainly through natural attrition and internal redeployment, although it will not be possible to avoid redundancies entirely. Assuming no change in market conditions, UBS estimates that, by mid-2009, the firm as a whole will have about 5,500 fewer employees than today.
Which sounds catastrophic. And indeed, the latest cuts, which follow 1,500 jobs losses across the last two quarters, comprise 12 per cent of the UBS investment bank’s reduced headcount.
But like the UK housing market and the Shanghai stock exchange, let’s look at the run up. Employment at UBS’s investment bank peaked around - surprise, surprise - the middle of last year at 22,833.
At the end of 2003, just after the bank eliminated the Warburg and Paine Webber sub-brands and when it had already started increasing staff numbers, headcount stood at 15,500. So the bank put on more than 7,300 people on the way up - of which more than 4,500 came since the start of 2006.
With pinks slips or P45s written or underway for more than 4,000 UBS employees, we’re either about right or barely half way there - depending on how bad you think the IB downturn is going to be.
Related links
UBS to shed a further 2,600 bankers - FT.com
