14 July, 2003

UBS is World's Best Bank

Euromoney gave its prestigious best bank award in 2003 to UBS because of the firm's sharp focus and because of management's ability to avoid credit losses and proprietary trading problems -- some of the factors among many why UBS's share price has held up better than most peers.

"It has striven to be a global leader in wealth and asset management and investment banking. These are businesses subject to securities market cycles. Yet, even with global equity indices falling over the previous year, UBS had done well in its chosen markets in market share and financial returns. It has won private-banking client assets, as other banks have lost them. It has risen to the top of the tree in foreign exchange, a market traditionally dominated by commercial banks, and in equities, traditionally dominated by the US securities houses," Euromoney said.

"Strategic consistency has been a key for us," UBS president Peter Wuffli told Euromoney. "So we didn't go into bancassurance - even though that was a temptation in recent years, given prices - nor into retail banking outside Switzerland. We do not see a workable pan-European retail model. Instead we have maintained our focus and striven to balance cost control and risk control on the one hand and achieving organic growth on the other."

According to the magazine, UBS has also been "ruthless" on costs and with regards to its balance sheet.

"We've moved out of non-core loans. We'll use our balance sheet to support specific client relationships," Wuffli told the magazine, adding, "But we've also exited certain relationships."

Wuffli also told the magazine that UBS's integrated business model is a key distinguishing factor, as it has "an integrated model, with one management group and culture which you need to manage the trade-offs between the bankers who represent the clients and the risk control people who defend the balance sheet".

14 July, 2003

UBS is World's Best Equity House

UBS was named Best Equity House globally for being the "clear leader across all equities in Europe" and for making "substantive progress" in the US. Euromoney writes, "Its trading franchise is the envy of its competitors, as is its research" and in Europe it is "the continent's strongest capital markets player", praised for its leadership in the lead management of rights issues, such as Kingfisher and Zurich Financial Services, and for other impressive deals, such as the Suez/Fortis combined offering. On the secondary side with the launch of Q-Series, UBS is lauded for being "the only investment bank in the US to come up with a fresh idea for research at a time when investors are crying out for more insight".

"It is the first time that our global equities platform has been recognised by an independent publication in this way", said Alan Hodson, Global Head of Equities. "We are delighted that the market acknowledges what we have achieved in building a US equities business that matches those in Europe and Asia".

James Garvin, Joint Global Head of Equity Capital Markets, added, "The theme of the past year has been balance sheet repair and this award recognises that UBS has both underwritten and lead managed many significant capital raisings for its clients when it has been needed most".

As well as the global award, UBS was named Best Equity House in Western Europe, Latin America, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Israel and the UK.

14 July, 2003

UBS is World's Best FX House

UBS’s award for Best Foreign Exchange House is a reflection of its “top notch services and strategy”. Euromoney noted, “The bank is now in a position where it has developed high-quality services across the board, from research, through advisory, to post-trade. And as it runs all of those under one organisational structure, it can simply pick and choose pieces of that to tailor packages for different types of clients”.

Naming some of the reasons for UBS's success, the magazine highlighted the good use of technology, internally for trade processing and externally for deal execution by clients. However, technology and strategy are nothing without good liquidity and good service for all clients groups, and the award goes on the highlight our liquidity outsourcing project, ‘Bank for Banks’ as a key factor in our dominance for attracting volumes from non-market-making banks. In addition, it named UBS’s ability to attract new prime-brokerage clients including blue-chip names which were previously clients of other firms.

Fabian Shey, Global Head of FX Services, commented, "This kind of recognition really fuels the momentum in our FX business. Adding clients to our distribution platform while increasing their dependency on UBS is centric to our growth strategy. We are proud to be a part of a winning team".

Martin Wiedmann, Global Head of FX Distribution, added, "Critical to our success has been our constant focus on our clients. In turn, our clients have been rewarding us with more and more business, and it's this growth in market share that has cast the spotlight on UBS in FX".

03 July, 2003

UBS No.1 for Mortgage-Backed Securities

UBS has been voted best overall mortgage-backed securities desk in Bondweek’s 2003 MBS survey. Noting UBS’s victory, one respondent, commented, “They’ve gotten bigger and deeper there - people and balance sheet match up nicely. This was the year where the firm crossed the threshold from good to very good”. Winning in five out of the eight sub-categories, UBS replaces Salomon Smith Barney, last year’s winner. The result reinforces the team’s success in Thomson Financial’s 2003 MBS league tables, where UBS ranked first for whole loans, first for MBS in the US and second for MBS globally.

The mortgage-backed securities market is made more significant given it is one of the largest individual sectors of the fixed income market. The US MBS market represents about 35% of the overall US fixed income market by size and about 16% of the global bond market. In the last year the firm has continued to develop the MBS/ABS Group, hiring a number of top traders, salespeople, researchers and originators to grow this business even further.

Ramesh Singh, Global Head of MBS and ABS, commented, “UBS's success in the MBS market is a result of its ongoing commitment to build the best franchise in this area. Results by most measures including profitability, market share, product capabilities and client franchise show continued success and improvement. Our team is proud of what we've accomplished thus far but we know there is much more to achieve".

See full results:
No.1 Overall
No.1 Agency Pass-through Sales
No.1 Agency CMO Trading
No.1 Non-Agency CMO Trading
No.1 Mortgage Derivatives Trading
No.1 Short Term Research

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