UBS-Credit Suisse merger could slash 30% jobs worldwide: Report

According to a weekly report by SonntagsZeitung on Sunday, the UBS-Credit Suisse merger could make 20 percent of workers around the world redundant. In order to avert a worldwide financial crisis fueled by the collapse of a couple of American banks, the Swiss government hurriedly arranged the merger of Credit Suisse and UBS on March 19th.

To wade through choppy waters, UBS revealed on Wednesday that it plans to reinstate erstwhile Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti amidst the controversial merger of Credit Suisse and UBS. Internal sources who didn’t want to be named divulged to SonntagsZeitung that management was contemplating downsizing the workforce by 20 to 30 percent, amounting to about 25,000 to 36,000 jobs.

As per the report, there could be 11,000 redundancies in Switzerland alone, but the details of the specific roles were not provided. The news about UBS-Credit Suisse job cuts comes at a time when both giants, considered to be one of the world’s eminent financial institutions, were deemed too big to fail due to their size.

“There is a huge amount of risk in integrating these businesses,” said Colm Kelleher, Chairman of UBS.

Before the calamitous collapse of the share prices of Credit Suisse on March 15th, the Swiss lender was entangled in numerous controversies before investor paranoia fomented following the collapse of US banks, putting the final nail in the coffin.

The controversies included the failure of Greensill, a British financial entity, and the collapse of the American hedge fund Archegos. It was further involved in a bribery scandal in Mozambique and was fined 2 million dollars for laundering money for Bulgarian cocaine syndicate.

(Information sourced from Live Mint)

Also Read – Tata steel’s mega move: Merger to take place by FY24