UBS intends to take on 70 bankers in Spain by 2010 to give impetus to the local private banking sales force.

UBS intends to take on 70 bankers in Spain by 2010 to give impetus to the local private banking sales force, backing the view that economic growth will increase demand for wealth management services, according to report a report on Bloomberg. UBS currently has a sales force of 130 attached to private banking in Spain, out of 300 staff in total, according to an interview with Miguel Irisarri, the Swiss bank's head of wealth management in Spain. He will add 25 sales staff in the country this year and will consider opening a further three branches to add to the seven it has or is about to open in Spain. “We want to provide the benchmark for private banking in Spain and we will invest what it takes to achieve that," he told Bloomberg. He said that UBS had €5.6 billion ($7.4 billion) in assets under management in private banking in Spain in 2005 and expects that amount to have grown 30 per cent in 2006 and 25 per cent in 2007. UBS runs the biggest foreign-owned private bank in Spain by volume of SICAVs and is the fifth-biggest overall by that measure.