(Bloomberg) — UBS Group AG Chairman Colm Kelleher said his bank is eventually looking to buy another U.S. wealth management firm to expand its presence there once the Credit Suisse integration is complete.
UBS needs to make the firm it bought in 2000, Paine Webber, work better, Kelleher said at an event in Oxford on Tuesday. At the same time, the bank is again looking to do what Morgan Stanley did — doubling its profitability through the acquisition of Smith Barney, he said.
“UBS would love to be able, when the time is right, to do something similar in the US,” added Kelleher. “We need 3 years to digest our acquisition of Credit Suisse, to solve our systems problems and to do everything else. We don't want to be distracted when we still have things to fix.”
UBS is the biggest global wealth manager but lags behind its peers in the US, where it has struggled to scale up the independent broker model it uses. Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti has also spoken about the need to expand in the world's largest economy and appointed top lieutenant Rob Karofsky to lead the region earlier this year.
Read more: Ermotti says UBS Catch-up in the US wealth market will take time
UBS operates a network of financial advisors who, while offering UBS products to clients, are not directly affiliated with the bank. The network of the Swiss firm includes more than 6,000 advisers, although it is much less than its main rival – Morgan Stanley.
“We have the cost base of a much larger organization in the US, but we don't yet have the capabilities that allow us to fully leverage our global franchise,” Ermotti said earlier this year.
Under previous chief executive Ralph Hamers, UBS made a bid to buy Wealthfront, a robo-advisory firm that would have taken the bank away from its traditional base of ultra-high-net-worth clients. The agreement was abandoned in 2022.
Speaking about his plans, Kelleher said he does not plan to serve 10 years, a standard term for a president in Switzerland.
“I thought for more than 8 years; I did three,” he said. “My job is to make sure we get the right replacement for Sergio and then I give that new CEO enough time to settle in and then I go.”