UBS Wealth Management to Fire a Sundry of Middle Management Losers, Plus Reduce Recruitment of Piker Advisers

I guess UBS is tired of paying asshole financial advisers 300% of their trailing 12 to join their ranks. In addition to firing a bunch of TPS report writing misfits, they’re reducing adviser recruitment by 40%. This is horrid news for all of the headhunters out there who prey on both advisers and employers to provide them with the money they need to shovel potatoes into their fat mugs.

It’s worth noting, UBS is taking a totally different approach than other large investment banks, who are cleaving their bond and investment banking departments, in order to make room for a most ridiculous people on the face of the earth: brokers and advisors.

The headcount reduction will mostly hit middle and senior managers, including some at the unit’s main offices in Weehawken, New Jersey, and New York, Tom Naratil, president of wealth management for UBS in the Americas, said in an interview. UBS declined to provide a specific number of cuts. The role of regional manager also will be eliminated, with some promoted and others reassigned, the Zurich-based lender said Wednesday in an internal memo.

The Swiss bank plans to decrease by 40 percent the number of financial advisers it recruits from competitors and how much it spends on those efforts starting this month, Naratil said. UBS declined to give current recruiting figures. The bank scooped up dozens of advisers last year when Credit Suisse Group AG exited U.S. wealth management.

“We took advantage of that,” Naratil said. “That’s one of the reasons why we can step back from the recruiting table.”

The Swiss never lose, unless of course you count the 50% drops in both UBS and CS shares as ‘losing.’