UBS is reducing its corporate advisory and investment banking services for ultra high net worth clients in some emerging market regions, according to Reuters, citing unnamed sources. UBS declined to comment.

UBS is reducing its corporate advisory and investment banking services for ultra high net worth clients in some emerging market regions, according to Reuters, citing unnamed sources. The bank declined to comment to WealthBriefing on the matter.

This publication understands that clients who had been receiving such services will be unaffected by the changes.

The Zurich-listed bank's corporate advisory group offers services such as advice on mergers and acquisitions and initial public offerings, financing options and structured equity products to UHNW individuals and entrepreneurs who were the bank's wealth management customers.

The news service said most of the CAG restructuring will take place in emerging markets such as the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Asia; the sources for the story did not say how many jobs will be cut.

Banks such as UBS which have large wealth management operations have been keen in the past to stress the importance of offering UHNW clients access to products and services that investment banks can provide, such as foreign exchange hedging and corporate financing. As many wealth management clients in emerging market regions have existing business interests, such close connections between investment banking and wealth management arguably make a good business case.

UBS, along with many of its peers, has had to reduce some of its investment banking exposures in recent years as regulatory capital standards have become more onerous. Switzerland’s biggest bank suffered heavy losses from the meltdown in the US sub-prime mortgage market. The bank has taken the strategic decision over the past year – as reported by this publication and others – to put more focus on its wealth management business going forward.

In general terms, UBS has seen an improvement across the globe in its wealth management profits, assets under management and revenues, continuing to add to offerings such as family office advisory services, for example. 

One of the unnamed sources told Reuters: "There were overlaps with the normal investment banking operations and it wasn't clear what the CAG staff were doing in certain geographies where there were good investment bankers to execute transactions," one of the sources said.

The unit, which employed nearly 80 bankers across 15 offices, essentially acted as an interface between the bank's wealth management and investment banking operations, the report said. After the restructuring it will only offer advice on corporate finance activities, while the "execution" part will be done by the bank's investment bankers.