UBS set to miss job cutting target after Credit Suisse takeover

UBS said it was 70% of the way to achieving its goal of cutting costs by $13bn by 2026. Keystone / Til Buergy

UBS is on track to miss an internal target to cut its headcount to 85,000 by the time it completes its integration of Credit Suisse next year.

The Swiss lender has shed an average of just 1,300 roles per quarter since the start of 2024, leaving it with more than 105,000 full-time staff at the end of June, according to company filings.

The current pace of job cuts means UBS is set to miss the internal target of reducing its full-time headcount to 85,000 by the end of 2026, when it is set to complete the integration of its former crosstown rival, which it took over in an emergency rescue deal in March 2023.

While UBS has not publicly disclosed a headcount target, people familiar with the matter previously told the Financial Times that executives were aiming to have a total workforce of 85,000 by the end of the integration process.

UBS said: “We are working towards cost targets, not headcount numbers.” The bank added that it was 70% of the way to achieving its goal of cutting costs by $13 billion (CHF10.5 billion) by 2026 and was “well on track” to achieving the planned savings.

The bank’s finance chief Todd Tuckner last month told analysts the remaining cost reductions would be “split half-and-half” between savings on technology spend and “people [and] capacity-related” expenses.

UBS took on about 45,000 employees overnight when it acquired Credit Suisse in a state-orchestrated rescue. Staff numbers peaked at more than 119,000 at the end of June 2023 and it has removed about 14,000 full-time roles since then.

The bank culled 3,500 jobs in the first half of this year, with the pace of cuts having slowed since the second half of 2023, when the bank was axing more than 3,000 roles per quarter, according to disclosures made by UBS.

Sergio Ermotti, UBS chief executive, earlier this year said about 7% of employees left annually of their own accord. But the group’s attrition rate – the percentage of staff leaving each year – fell below its historic norm earlier this year, said a person familiar with the matter, which has complicated the efforts to reduce headcount.

One person briefed on UBS’s cost-cutting operation said the bank was prioritising hiring internal candidates to vacant roles, adding internal hires filled more than two-thirds of open positions in Switzerland last year.

The lender is in the crucial phase of migrating more than one million of Credit Suisse’s Swiss retail clients to UBS’s systems, and has cut hundreds of roles in its home country this year.

The person added that the cost-cutting was “not a straight line” and that the bank was unable to shut some legacy Credit Suisse systems until client migration ended around the end of March 2026.

UBS said the role reductions would “take place over the course of several years” and would be mostly achieved “through natural attrition [and] early retirement”, as well as bringing external positions in-house.

The bank added: “We will keep the number of jobs cut as a result of the integration as low as possible and are providing active support to impacted employees. This includes helping them find a new job within UBS or externally.”

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