Seven months after announcing plans to rename its brands, UBS AG, headquartered in Switzerland, will take that step today.
UBS PaineWebber will henceforth be known as UBS Financial Services, and the UBS Warburg brand has been eliminated to make room for UBS Investment Bank. UBS Global Asset Management will retain its name.
The global financial services firm announced in November its plans to eliminate the names as part of a policy of adopting a single brand to raise its profile. At that time, Marcel Ospel, chairman of the board of directors, said, "We need a flagship brand. It's a further logical step in our efforts to define the future as one firm."
UBS Investment Bank will house sales, trading, research, and investment banking operations, while UBS Financial Services is the broker-dealer arm and also provides wealth management services. The municipal group will remain part of UBS Financial Services.
A spokeswoman for UBS said that there will be no changes in the firm's management and structure. "It is simply a re-branding of the company," she said.
In November, a statement from the firm said that UBS decided to make the name changes after recognizing that the UBS brand had the highest recognition among all of UBS' brands in all the targeted areas where UBS is active. The firm carried out research in 14 countries, involving thousands of clients and potential clients.
In the statement, the firm said that it has benefited from the strength of all the brands. Before its acquisition of PaineWebber, domestic awareness of the UBS brand in 1999 was a low single-digit percentage, but after two years, 40% of affluent clients and 55% of corporate and institutional clients in the U.S. said they were very familiar or somewhat familiar with the UBS brand.
In 2002, UBS PaineWebber ranked second among senior managers in the U.S. The firm was senior manager on 846 issues totaling $42.86 billion. Salomon Smith Barney, which changed its name in April to Citigroup Global Markets Inc., finished first as senior manager for 644 issues totaling $51.44 billion.
