UBS ‘narrowing down’ options for relocation after Brexit

UBS has been preparing contingency plans for Brexit since before the British referendum. (Reuters)

DUBAI: Will it be Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Madrid?
Sergio Ermotti, the chief executive of UBS, said that they are ‘narrowing down their options’ as the Swiss lender considers transferring some of its London operation to European destinations over the next few months due to Brexit.
Switzerland’s largest lender has been preparing contingency plans even before British citizens, in a referendum, voted to leave the EU in June 2016.
“We do believe that by the end of summer or early part of Q4, we will need to further narrow down the options and start to implement some of these moves. (This) will indicate – maybe – the necessity to move people and also to reshape our legal entity construct in order to be able to serve clients,” he said.
“Frankfurt is a location of choice… There are different other locations that could come into consideration. I think about Amsterdam, I think about Madrid in different shapes or forms,” Ermotti replied, when asked by CNBC whether the German city would be the most likely new address for UBS after Brexit.
Major banks operating in London could shift at least 9,000 roles out of the UK as result of the British vote to leave the UE.
In April, Deutsche Bank warned it could relocate many of its trading and investment-banking assets – involving up to 4,000 UK jobs or nearly half of its UK manpower – to Frankfurt and other EU centers.
American lender JP Morgan is also preparing to move up to 1,000 bankers out of the City to Dublin, Frankfurt and Luxembourg.
Goldman Sachs, although it continues to build a new headquarters in London, announced that it needed staff in Madrid, Milan, Paris and other cities in the EU.
HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver meanwhile said early this year his bank would move staff responsible for generating around 20 percent of its UK-based trading revenue to Paris.
The Bank of England has given a July 14 deadline for financial firms to explain how they were planning for the UK departure from the EU, following prime minister Theresa May’s triggering of article 50 last week, formally launching the Brexit process.