UBS Shares Fall After Money Outflows Hit U.S. Wealth-Management Business

By Adria Calatayud

UBS Group shares fell after the Swiss bank reported money outflows at its U.S. wealth-management business last quarter and executives said headwinds would continue in the first half of this year.

The Zurich-based group said Wednesday that its core global wealth management unit brought in $8.5 billion in net new assets last quarter, a sharp drop compared with the $38 billion it attracted the previous quarter. Outflows of $14.1 billion in the Americas were offset by inflows elsewhere.

Shares in UBS fell as much as 5.5% in European morning trading, with some analysts saying a weak U.S. wealth-management performance could raise eyebrows.

UBS has taken steps to restructure its U.S. wealth-management operations in a bid to improve profitability, which resulted in departures of some of its financial advisors and in money outflows in recent quarters.

The bank's chief executive, Sergio Ermotti, said in a call with analysts that recent actions had led to temporary headwinds in the Americas, but that wealth-management net new assets in the region would be positive in 2026.

"We do expect further [net new asset] headwinds through the first half of 2026, after which we expect net recruiting outflow impacts to materially taper," UBS Chief Financial Officer Todd Tuckner said.

The U.S. challenges come as UBS enters the final year of its integration of Credit Suisse, a former cross-town rival that it acquired in 2023 in a rescue deal orchestrated by Swiss authorities, and confronts uncertainty in its home country about the extent to which its capital requirements will increase.

Switzerland's government last year proposed an overhaul of the country's banking rules that would substantially increase UBS's capital requirements, in a move aimed at preventing a repeat of a Credit Suisse-style crisis. UBS has pushed back against the proposals, saying they would put its business model at risk and place a heavy burden on the Swiss economy.

UBS said it plans a $3 billion stock buyback this year while leaving the door open for more. The amount of additional repurchases would depend on clarity around Switzerland's future regulatory regime and the bank's financial performance, it added. It hiked its dividend by 22% to $1.10 a share.

The bank said it was on track to achieve the targets it set after the deal. The bank said it identified additional cost savings of $500 million that would take its cumulative savings by the end of the year to $13.5 billion, up from $13 billion previously, but revised upward its expectations for integration-related expenses to $15 billion from $14 billion.

"I'm confident in our ability to substantially complete the integration and capture the remaining synergies by the end of the year," Ermotti said. "But the final wave of the Swiss book lines migration has the highest level of complexity and is a key dependency to fully winding down the legacy infrastructure through the end of the year."

UBS set out an ambition to achieve a return on common equity Tier 1, or CET1, capital--a measure of profitability--of about 18% by 2028. The targets would take UBS's return on CET1 capital above the 17% it achieved in 2022, the year before the Credit Suisse acquisition reshaped the group.

For the fourth quarter, the bank reported a net profit of $1.2 billion compared with $770 million in the year-earlier period, mainly driven by higher underlying earnings in its wealth management and investment banking arms and smaller losses from Credit Suisse's noncore assets. Analysts forecast net profit at $919 million, according to consensus estimates compiled by the bank.

Revenue was up 4% at $12.145 billion, against consensus expectations of $11.72 billion.

Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com

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February 04, 2026 05:47 ET (10:47 GMT)