UBS Case Study

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UBS has its roots as a Swiss Bank, originating in 1862, when its first major branch, Bank in Winterthur, was established. However, the three core components of the company date back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation, and Paine Webber or their predecessors were all founded in the 1860s and 1870s. Modern UBS was formed through a merger of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation in June 1998.
The Swiss Bank Corporation was founded in 1854 as the Basel Bank Corporation and became a joint-stock company in 1872 that specialized in investment banking. In 1895 its name was changed to Basler und Zurcher Bankverein when it merged with the Zurcher Bankverein (Zurich Bank Corporation). At that time it also began commercial banking, which eventually became its principal activity. After absorbing two other Swiss banks in 1897(Basler Depositen-Bank and Schweizerische
Unionbank ), the bank adopted the name Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC).

By the 1990s, the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation had become respectively the first and third largest banks in Switzerland, but increasing competition from American financial institutions prompted the two banks to merge in 1998. The resulting United Bank of Switzerland became one of the largest banks in the world. The bank’s principal activities include commercial banking, investment banking, and money management. Swiss Bank acquired S.G. Warburg, a financial services company, in 1995, and UBS purchased PaineWebber, a securities firm, in 2000 and both subsidiaries assumed the UBS name in 2003.
On November 3, 2000, UBS merged with Paine Webber, an American stock brokerage and asset management firm. A...

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...f the renewal plan is management processes should include regular reviews of business activities and UBS's portfolio risks. The CEO and heads of the business units will now ensure that comprehensive risk reviews are preformed at regular intervals. These reviews will make sure that changes in market condition, portfolio compositions, and risk concentration are all accounted for. The last objective of the new strategy is to make sure investment decisions are better organized to improve supervision of compliance with internal bank priorities, financing activities, and the implementation of "change the bank" initiatives. To do this, new leadership subjected the priorities and activities of all business units and organizational structures to a thorough examination and realignment. Its main objective being to create a new UBS capable of sustained high performance.

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