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 Business News | June 2006 
UBS Eyes New Branches in Mexico, Korea, Netherlands
 Reuters
| | Its drive this decade to expand outside its Swiss home turf has led it to acquire or open branches in at least seven European countries, Asia, North America, Russia and India. |
UBS AG (UBSN.VX), the world's largest wealth manager, said on Wednesday it was considering opening bank branches in the Netherlands, Korea and Mexico in a push to attract wealthy clients in their home countries.
The Swiss-based bank, which is rapidly expanding its core business of offering sophisticated services to wealthy families, would open the three branches to complement its "onshore" push into Europe, Russia, India, Asia and North America.
The strategy is designed to attract clients to UBS closer to their homes instead of drawing them to its base in Switzerland, the world's largest center for offshore wealth management.
UBS also plans to intensify its organic expansion specifically into India and Russia, the bank said.
UBS, which has widened its lead in the fast-growing wealth management industry in recent years, is expected to unveil details of the plan at an investor day in Zurich later on Wednesday.
The bank pulled in a record 33.6 billion Swiss francs ($27.5 billion) of net new money into its wealth management business in the first quarter of this year alone, taking total invested assets to just under 2 trillion francs and making it the largest manager of wealth assets in the world.
Its drive this decade to expand outside its Swiss home turf has led it to acquire or open branches in at least seven European countries, Asia, North America, Russia and India.
Earlier this month, UBS unveiled a surprise $2.5 billion takeover of Banco Pactual, Brazil's last independent investment bank, and UBS's largest takeover since the $11.8 billion purchase of U.S. brokerage PaineWebber in 2000.
In April, UBS agreed to pay up to $875 million for brokerage operations at U.S. investment bank Piper Jaffray (NYSE:PJC - news) and only last week agreed to buy ABN AMRO Holding NV's (AAH.AS) global futures and options trading business for $386 million. |
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