Client fears about Europe’s government debt crisis, as highlighted by the turmoil in Greece, could make it harder for UBS to reverse wealth management client withdrawals in 2010, according to Juerg Zeltner, the firm’s wealth management head.

“They want to stay away from equity markets, they even don’t trust the bond markets anymore,” Zeltner was quoted by Bloomberg as saying. That does have an impact on the speed, though not on the trend of outflows, he said.

The difficult economic environment means UBS’s target of returning European onshore business to profit this year may take longer to achieve than originally planned, Zeltner said.

“In the next six to 12 months, I feel comfortable that we’ll be there,” he said.

At the start of June, Zeltner was reported as saying that UBS intended to increase the number of client advisors in the second half of this year.

As reported earlier this year, UBS’s wealth management arm logged net outflows of SFr8.0 billion (around $7.6 billion) in the first quarter of 2010, compared with SFr32.9 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

More positively, the first quarter witnessed continued net new money inflows in the Asia Pacific region. Total net outflows from Swiss wealth management were SFr1.2 billion, down from SFr1.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. For international wealth management, net new money outflows improved considerably to SFr6.8 billion from SFr31.2 billion. In the Wealth Management Americas division, meanwhile, there were net outflows of SFr7.2 billion in the first quarter, a slight slowing of client exits from the previous three months, when outflows were SFr12.0 billion.