UBS is making a bigger push to bring together its wealth management division and investment bank, a strategy unfolding in cities around the US and targeting more middle-market deals.
One UBS financial advisor described the effort to Business Insider this way: "If I'm a financial advisor and I have a really good relationship with my investment banking team, I can just call up my guy and say, 'I have a deal. Can you do this for me?'" UBS is on a quest to tap its $2.75 trillion wealth management division's deep well of ultra-rich clients to help drive more business to its investment bank, deploying bankers around the US to make it happen.
In effect, the firm is assigning investment bankers to offices around the US dubbed private-wealth service hubs, primarily in some of the country's most monied cities to support public- and private-company transactions with elite private-wealth financial advisor teams. "The thought was, let's prove out the model with a smart, but prudent investment. Once we have the proof points that the strategy is working, we will invest more. I know senior management will give us the opportunity to do that, or we will adjust the strategy," said Crisci, who joined UBS in 2015 from Jefferies, where he was the global co-head of technology investment banking.
Expanding investment-banking services could help attract new business, said the advisor, who requested anonymity to discuss the strategy because he was not authorized to do so. The firm's new chief executive, Ralph Hamers, started in his post at the start of November after taking over from Sergio Ermotti, who has led the bank for nearly a decade and oversaw multiple overhauls of the investment bank. As this initiative has ramped up this year, a new frenzy around an old type of deal started gripping investment banking:. They are designed as shell corporations to take companies public outside of the traditional initial public offering process.
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