UBS банктерінің бірігу тарихы және дамуы

Swiss investment bank and financial services company
the UBS predecessor bank merged in 1998

UBS also entered the life insurance business in 1993 establishing UBS Life. UBS formed a joint venture with Swiss Life in 1995, known as UBS Swiss Life. UBS took a 25% ownership position in Swiss Life in exchange for a 50% share in the joint venture. UBS entered the 1990s clearly the largest and most conservative of the three large Swiss Banks. Unlike Swiss Bank and Credit Suisse, which had both made aggressive international acquisitions in trading and investment banking, UBS's investments had been more conservative in businesses such as asset management and life insurance while 60% of the bank's profits came from its even more conservative Swiss banking operations. In 1993, Credit Suisse outbid UBS for Switzerland's Swiss Volksbank, the fifth largest bank in Switzerland which had run into financial difficulties in the early 1990s. Schröder Münchmeyer Hengst was formed through the 1969 merger of three German banks: Schroeder Brothers & Co., Muenchmeyer & Co. and Frederick Hengst & Co. (formerly known as Bank Siegmund Merzbach). Martin Ebner, through his investment trust, BK Vision became the largest shareholder in UBS and attempted to force a major restructuring of the bank's operations. The battles between Ebner and UBS management proved a distraction to the bank in the mid 1990s. Looking to take advantage of the situation, Credit Suisse approached UBS about a merger that would have created the second largest bank in the world in 1996. UBS's management and board unanimously rebuffed the proposed merger. Ebner, who supported the idea of a merger, led a major shareholder revolt that resulted in the replacement of UBS's chairman, Robert Studer. Studer's successor Mathis Cabiallavetta would be one of the key architects of the merger with Swiss Bank Corporation. The all stock merger resulted in the creation UBS AG, a huge new bank with total assets of more than US$590 billion. Also referred to as the "New UBS" to distinguish itself from the former Union Bank of Switzerland, the combined bank became the second largest in the world, at that time, behind only the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi. The more severe cuts at UBS were an acknowledgment that prior to the merger Swiss Bank Corporation had built a global investment banking business, Warburg Dillon Read through its acquisitions of Dillon Read in New York and S. G. Warburg in London. Swiss Bank was generally considered to be further along than UBS in developing its international investment banking business, particularly in the higher margin advisory businesses where Warburg Dillon Read was considered to be the more established platform. UBS, on the other hand had a stronger retail and commercial banking business in Switzerland and both banks had notably strong asset management capabilities. It would become clear that the derivatives losses prompted UBS to accept the terms proposed by Swiss Bank more readily than they otherwise would have.

Prior to its merger with Swiss Bank Corporation, UBS operated as a full service bank and a provider of wholesale financial services through its retail banking, commercial banking, investment banking, asset management and wealth management businesses. In 1997, prior to its merger with Swiss Bank Corporation, UBS operated 275 branches in Switzerland and 82 branches, subsidiaries and representative offices outside Switzerland. The company had approximately 27,611 employees, of which 19,355 worked in Switzerland and the remaining 8,256 employees were outside Switzerland. The bank had total assets of nearly CHF578 billion and shareholders' equity of nearly CHF28 billion as of the end of 1997.

In 1862, The Bank in Winterthur was founded in Winterthur, Switzerland, with an initial share capital of CHF5 million. The Bank in Winterthur operated primarily as a commercial bank, providing financing for a range of companies and projects. The bank would be involved in funding the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works, the hotel Baur au Lac in Zürich and many other companies. Meanwhile, in 1863, the Toggenburger Bank was founded in Lichtensteig, Switzerland with an initial share capital of CHF1.5 million. In 1882, Toggenburger Bank opened a branch in St. Gallen in eastern Switzerland and began to shift its operations there through the end of the 19th century.]] Through the Great Depression, UBS pared its assets considerably shrinking from CHF993 million in 1929 to CHF441 million at the end of 1935. The bank saw its shareholders' capital decline from CHF100 million in 1929 to CHF80 million in 1933 and then further to CHF40 million by 1936. The issue of "unclaimed property" of Holocaust victims became a major issue for UBS in the mid 1990s and a series of revelations in 1997 brought the issue to the forefront of national attention in 1996 and 1997. UBS confirmed that a large number of accounts that had gone unclaimed as a result of the bank's policy of requiring death certificates from family members to claim the contents of the account. UBS's handling of these revelations were largely criticized and the bank received significant negative attention in the U. S. UBS came under significant pressure, particularly from American politicians, to compensate Holocaust survivors who were making claims against the bank. In January 1997, Christoph Meili, a night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland, found employees shredding archives compiled by a subsidiary that had extensive dealings with Nazi Germany. The shredding was in direct violation of a recent Swiss law adopted in December 1996 protecting such material. UBS acknowledged that it had "made a deplorable mistake", but an internal historian maintained that the destroyed archives were unrelated to the Holocaust. Criminal proceedings then began against the archivist for possible violation of a recent Federal Document Destruction decree and against Meili for possible violation of bank secrecy, which is a criminal offence in Switzerland. Both proceedings were discontinued by the District Attorney in September 1997. Meili was suspended from his job at the security company that served UBS, following a criminal investigation. Meili and his family left Switzerland for the United States where they were granted political asylum. By contrast, in the U. S., Meili was largely regarded as a hero and whistleblower and received a particularly warm reception from the American Jewish community. In 1997, the World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks (WJC) was launched to retrieve deposits made by victims of Nazi persecution during and prior to World War II. Negotiations involving Union Bank of Switzerland, Credit Suisse, the WJC and Stuart Eizenstat, on behalf of the U. S., ultimately resulted in a settlement of US$1.25 billion in August 1998. The settlement, which coincided with UBS's merger with Swiss Bank, together with the bank's embarrassment in the Long Term Capital Management collapse in 1998 brought a degree of closure to the issue.

Shortly after the end of World War II, UBS completed the acquisition of Eidgenössische Bank, a large Zürich based bank that became insolvent. As a result of the merger, UBS exceeded CHF1 billion of assets for the first time and completed the transition of its operations to Zürich. Although UBS opened an office in New York in 1946, the bank remained primarily focused on its domestic business. UBS opened branches and acquired a series of banks in Switzerland growing from 31 offices in 1950 to 81 offices by the beginning of the 1960s. Throughout the 1950s, UBS was the most acquisitive bank in Switzerland, acquiring Banque Palézieux & Cie. (1948), Volksbank Interlaken (1952), Weck, Aebi & Cie (1954), Banque Tissières fils & Cie. (1956), Banque de Sion (1956), Banque de Brigue (1957), the Crédit Gruyérien (1957), Crédit Sierrois (1957), Bank Cantrade AG (1960) and Volksbank in Visp (1960). By 1962, UBS reached CHF6.96 billion of assets, narrowly edging ahead of Swiss Bank Corporation to become the largest bank in Switzerland temporarily. Through 1979, SBC was consistently the largest of the three major Swiss banks by assets, except for short periods in 1962 and then again in 1968 when UBS temporarily moved ahead of SBC. After 1979, UBS would firmly establish itself as the largest Swiss bank. UBS continued its rapid growth in the 1960s punctuated by the acquisition of Interhandel (Industrie und Handelsbeteiligungen AG) in 1967. Interhandel, originally, was a large Swiss conglomerate that up until the 1960s had both financial as well as industrial holdings. Interhandel was the corporate successor of I. G. Chemie, which the U. S. government had claimed was a front for Germany's I. G. Farben during World War II. During the war, the U. S. government seized General Aniline & Film (later GAF Corporation), an Interhandel subsidiary, and it was not until 1963 that the long running dispute between Interhandel and the U. S. government was resolved. The shares in GAF Corporation were sold in a highly competitive auction in 1965 and the proceeds were split between Interhandel and the U. S. government. As a result of the sale of GAF, at the time of its merger with UBS, Interhandel held substantial amounts of cash. The addition of the Interhandel capital, which propelled UBS into the top spot among Swiss banks in 1968, also made UBS one of the strongest banks in Europe and helped fuel the bank's further expansion in the late 1960s and 1970s. Union Bank of Switzerland sold LTCM a 7 year European call option on 1 million shares in LTCM, then valued at about US$800 million. It hedged this option by purchasing a US$800 million interest in LTCM and invested a further US$300 million in the hedge fund. Following the merger, Swiss Bank managers were surprised to discover the massive exposure to LTCM at UBS. UBS would prove to be the largest single loser in the LTCM collapse, ultimately writing off CHF950 million. UBS contributed US$300 million to the bailout effort, which would largely be recovered. In the aftermath of the LTCM collapse, Mathis Cabiallavetta resigned as chairman of UBS along with three other executives.

Union Bank of Switzerland, prior to its merger with Swiss Bank Corporation was the result of the combination of dozens of individual firms, many of which date to the 19th century. The following is an illustration of the company's major mergers and acquisitions and historical predecessors, although this is not necessarily a comprehensive list: