UBS is threatening to maneuver to the US. Sound acquainted?

UBS is seeking to transfer its HQ to the US, and the Swiss banking big has spoken to the Trump administration about it. Sound acquainted?

That’s what the Monetary Occasions reported this week – precisely two months after On The Cash broke the story. The humorous factor is, if historical past is any information (and if my sources are to be believed), the repeat headline is a sign that UBS isn’t going anyplace anytime quickly.

As On The Cash reported earlier, UBS hates all of the regulation being heaped on by the Swiss authorities, together with some latest, extra onerous capital necessities that far exceed what any US financial institution wants to carry. 

The large Swiss financial institution feels that it did its nation a giant favor taking on the ill-fated Credit score Suisse and integrating the factor into its operations whereas consuming most of the prices. It additionally feels that its authorities is jeopardizing its capacity to compete globally with the likes of JPMorgan.

In September, we first reported, prime UBS officers met with President Trump’s Treasury Division to discover such a transfer. (This was the identical assembly confirmed by the FT earlier this week.)

But there’s an adage in journalism that when shops get round to reporting one thing late that’s in their very own yard, they’re actually chasing a narrative that has moved on. And that’s precisely what I’m listening to is the case right here.

As of now, UBS is leaning towards preserving its HQ in Switzerland – and for just a few easy causes, my sources say. UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher and CEO Sergio Ermotti know that to domicile the financial institution within the US, they’d actually have to surrender their huge operations in Switzerland.

UBS would face  an avalanche of rules and harassment by native authorities if it remained as a US financial institution and continued its massive enterprise presence in Geneva. To maneuver to the US could be to relinquish every part it created as Europe’s premier banker over the previous 162 years, financial institution executives say.

“The Swiss will make their lives insufferable, which is why they aren’t leaving,” mentioned one prime government at a significant US financial institution. “If Kelleher and Ermotti assume the regulation on them is hard now, wait till they arrange store in NYC.”

So what’s UBS doing by assembly with the Trump administration, as we first reported in September and the FT is revisiting now? One thing our president likes to name “negotiation.”

This complete dance is to power the Swiss to again off the brand new capital necessities that the financial institution says would power it to extend the dimensions of its cushion in opposition to losses by a staggering $26 billion.

Leaking these tales places the federal government on discover that whereas UBS might not transfer its HQ out of Geneva, it might probably vastly enhance its US footprint. The large financial institution already has a formidable presence within the US; its brokerage division of about 6,000 wealth advisers is taken into account one in every of Wall Road’s greatest.

It contains what was once referred to as PaineWebber, the as soon as formidable US funding financial institution and brokerage agency. I truly reported the story again in late 2000 when UBS bought the mid-size funding financial institution run by two of Wall Road’s most succesful executives, Joe Grano and Don Marron.

The $10.8 billion deal is extensively considered among the many most profitable financial institution mergers ever. Wall Road sources count on that moderately than depart Geneva and all that Swiss enterprise the federal government would throttle in the event that they arrange their HQ right here, Kelleher and Ermotti will purchase a brokerage agency or a small funding financial institution to beef up their US operations.

They may also proceed to leak stuff about leaving, which the Trump administration has no downside confirming, casting it as a present of confidence within the US monetary system. One Trump official did so unabashedly months in the past, stating to On The Cash that such negotiations with international firms “is what we would like.”

A UBS rep declined remark.