UBS envisions an eventual US wealth firm acquisition, says Chairman Kelleher

UBS Group AG Chairman Colm Kelleher said that his bank is eventually looking to buy another US wealth management firm to expand its presence there, once the Credit Suisse integration is complete. 

UBS needs to make the firm which it bought in 2000, Paine Webber, work better, Kelleher said at an event in Oxford on Tuesday. At the same time, the bank is looking again to do what Morgan Stanley did — doubling its profitability through the purchase of Smith Barney, he said.

“UBS would very much like to be able to, when the time is right, do a similar sort of thing in the US,” Kelleher added. “We need 3 years to digest our own acquisition of Credit Suisse, sort out our systems issues and do everything else. We don’t want to be distracted when we’ve still got things to put right.”

UBS is the biggest global wealth manager but lags its peers in the US, where it has struggled to scale up the independent broker model it uses. Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti has also spoken about the need to expand in the world’s largest economy, and appointed key lieutenant Rob Karofsky run the region earlier this year. 

UBS operates with a network of financial advisers who, while they deliver UBS products to clients, are not directly bound to the bank. The Swiss firm’s network spans more than 6,000 advisers, though that’s far fewer than its key rival — Morgan Stanley. 

“We have the cost base of a much larger organization in the US but we don’t have the capabilities yet that allow us to fully leverage our global franchise,” Ermotti said earlier this year.

Under previous chief executive Ralph Hamers, UBS made an attempt to buy Wealthfront, a robo-adviser firm that would have taken the bank away from its traditional ultra-high net worth client base. The deal was abandoned in 2022. 

Speaking about his own plans, Kelleher said that he doesn’t plan to serve for 10 years, a standard chairman term in Switzerland. 

“I’ve been thinking more like 8 years; I’ve done three,” he said. “My job is to make sure we get the right replacement for Sergio and then I give that new CEO enough time to get bedded in and then I go.”