(Geneva) The Swiss banking giant UBS is preparing to cut 35,000 jobs in the coming months with the acquisition of its former rival Credit Suisse, the Bloomberg agency said on Tuesday.
This figure represents more than half of Credit Suisse’s 45,000 employees.
Asked by AFP, UBS declined to comment on this.
On March 19, UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse under pressure from the authorities for 3 billion Swiss francs. The crisis of confidence, after a series of scandals and virulent criticism of risk management, had pushed Credit Suisse to the brink of bankruptcy.
At the end of 2022, the two Swiss banking giants had around 120,000 employees worldwide, including 37,000 in Switzerland.
According to Bloomberg, which cites two sources familiar with the matter, UBS intends to reduce this total combined workforce by around 30%, or 35,000 people.
The agency says, citing those same sources, that employees have been told they should expect three waves of job cuts this year, with the first scheduled for the end of July. The other two would follow in September and October.
Employees at Credit Suisse’s investment bank in London, New York and parts of Asia are expected to be hardest hit by the cuts.
The fact that the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS leads to job cuts is not new. Employment will be “the most difficult wheel” of integration, recently indicated the boss of UBS Sergio Ermotti, during the Swiss Economic Forum, a conference which brings together Swiss companies in Interlaken.
He felt, however, that job cuts were inevitable if only because of the duplication in some of the activities of the two banks.