UBS Group Starts Trading as Switzerland’s Top Bank Reorganizes
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — UBS Group AG, the holding company created to make Switzerland’s biggest bank easier to break up, began trading in Zurich today.
Shares traded at 17.14 Swiss francs ($17.74) as of 9:40 a.m., down from UBS AG’s close of 17.15 francs yesterday. UBS Group became the bank’s majority owner with over 90 percent of voting rights today after investors swapped their original UBS AG stock.
After a second exchange period ends on Dec. 10, UBS plans to squeeze out any remaining shareholders and will eventually delist UBS AG shares from the stock exchanges in Zurich and New York.
Regulators say the holding company will make it easier to wind down and prevent a failure from disrupting the financial system. To further fence off risks, UBS plans to establish a banking subsidiary in Switzerland by mid-2015 that will house retail, corporate and the Swiss-booked wealth management business.
It is reorganizing its unit in the U.K. to make it more self-sufficient and will have an intermediate holding company for all units in the U.S. by mid-2016. All businesses will remain within UBS AG, which in turn is owned by UBS Group.
UBS has said the creation of the holding company will probably reduce the amount of capital the bank has to hold under Swiss too-big-to-fail rules as it gets. The bank expects to return at least 25 Swiss centimes per share to stockholders of the new group.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeffrey Vögeli in Zurich at jvogeli@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elisa Martinuzzi at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net Edward Evans
