UBS to focus on India business

What are the plans for UBS on the business front and hiring in India?

For us, India is a strategic priority for continued investment and growth. We have a full banking licence and need to build our business around that. We will focus on high networth private markets with our wealth management platform and corporate institutional franchise in the securities and investment banking platform. We will grow our headcount by 40-50% in the next 12-18 months. The new hires will be in fixed income and equities and in other areas like foreign exchange and debt capital market. We are also building our operations, technology, back office and will be hiring in these divisions too.

How do you see Swiss banks looking at changing regulations, specially on higher disclosure?

I don’t think Swiss banks will be regulated fundamentally differently from other international banks. The Swiss regulator is likely to adopt the same types of requirements and regulations that will be adopted around the world. I hope that the regulatory landscape will be a much more consistent one. The difficulty and challenge that we have at the moment is the very uneven playing field between the different interpretations and engagements with regulation in different jurisdictions. I think it will be a lot better for the banking industry as a whole for a much more consistent approach taken by different regulators around the world so that the levels of disclosure, capital and transparency of regulation and of operation are consistent right across the world. The Swiss banking regulator had said last year that large banks like UBS and Credit Suisse should be broken up. Your comments.

I don’t think that’s a sensible approach because I think the global economy needs to be serviced by banks that are able to operate on a global basis and with sufficient scale to have an impact. I think to fragment the banking industry will be a reversal of the globalisation trend and will result in banks of insufficient scale, knowledge and international capability to be able to service the needs of global industry. If banks were forced to break up, become smaller and less international, I don’t think that will be in the best interest of the global economy.

Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/banking/finance/banking/UBS-to-focus-on-India-business/articleshow/5465776.cms