UBS (ticker: UBS ) stated its technique stays unchanged and the addition of Credit score Suisse ( CS ) will enhance its skill to serve shoppers globally. The mix helps our progress ambitions within the Americas and Asia, whereas including scale to our enterprise in Europe, and we look ahead to welcoming our new clients and colleagues all over the world within the coming weeks, CEO Ralph Hamers stated in an announcement.

The sheer dimension of the 2 banks, in addition to the burden of integrating them, might immediate some shoppers to look elsewhere, maybe to smaller Swiss managers akin to Pictet & Cie or Julius Baer ( BAER.Switzerland ). U.S. wealth managers akin to Morgan Stanley ( MS ) might also decide up rich shoppers, trade consultants say.

The mix will probably be an enormous however not a nimble or interesting participant for lots of the ultra-rich, stated Bob Casey, an unbiased wealth administration advisor. Rich households hate financial institution mergers.

S&P International Scores revised its outlook for UBS to unfavourable on Monday, anticipating the Credit score Suisse integration to convey dangers. The score company confirmed the UBS A issuer credit standing.

Though the 2 corporations are each world asset managers, they don’t overlap within the US. Credit score Suisse closed its US wealth administration unit in 2016, whereas UBS has refined its US technique of catering to excessive and ultra-high internet value shoppers. UBS has greater than 6,000 monetary advisors in its Americas unit, which incorporates the US in addition to a small variety of advisors in Canada and Latin America.

For UBS, Credit score Suisse’s non-US wealth administration enterprise is a giant alternative, supplied it could actually retain Credit score Suisse’s advisers and shoppers, who in latest weeks might have been weighing whether or not to decamp to rival wealth managers. Some shoppers have in all probability already withdrawn cash from Credit score Suisse. UBS might want to act shortly to stipulate the advantages of the merger to Credit score Suisse advisers, stated Alois Pirker, managing director of wealth administration consultancy Pirker Companions. Pirker says elite advisers who’ve relationships with rich shoppers are in demand in virtually each market.

UBS wants to inform a narrative to advisers the agency needs to maintain, and they should inform it quickly, he says.

The corporate might also have to supply advisors retention bonuses to stay round after the merger.

Earlier wealth administration acquisitions have been marred as rivals swooped to recruit advisers from the acquired agency, a dynamic already acquainted to UBS and Credit score Suisse. When Credit score Suisse closed its US wealth administration unit in 2016, it sought to maneuver its practically 300 US advisers to

Wells Fargo
.

UBS and different rivals jumped in, recruiting dozens of Credit score Suisse advisers who would in any other case have ended up at Wells Fargo.

UBS will even face a long-term problem of integrating the agency’s platforms or just migrating Credit score Suisse’s advisers and shoppers to UBS. Integrating totally different techniques and applied sciences will be difficult and take years, says Pirker. He expects that UBS will want to easily switch Credit score Suisse advisers and shoppers to its platform.

UBS is a well-oiled machine, he says. Why would they begin taking that machine aside and reassembling it otherwise? It would not make a lot sense.

Swiss regulators moved on the weekend to rearrange the UBS acquisition after Credit score Suisse noticed money circulate final week and its valuation fell. The deal averts Credit score Suisse’s collapse and its potential spillover results, however the hasty marriage will even reshape the worldwide banking panorama, creating new challenges.

Traders initially appeared skeptical of the worth of the deal for UBS. Shares fell greater than 15% in Zurich buying and selling on Monday earlier than recouping these losses to finish the session up 1.3%. The financial institution’s US-listed shares traded 4.5% increased late within the session.

The deal offers UBS Credit score Suisse’s funding financial institution and its retail banking unit in Switzerland. UBS stated the acquisition will make it the most important financial institution in Switzerland when it comes to buyer deposits and loans.

Analysts had a combined response. UBS was downgraded to Underperform from Market Carry out at Keefe Bruyette. The financial institution was upgraded to Purchase from Impartial at Financial institution of America.

The deal is prone to be value-enhancing for UBS and its shareholders given the steep low cost and draw back safety UBS has supplied to finish the mandatory restructuring, stated Firdaus Ibrahim, an analyst at CFRA Analysis, who maintained a Maintain score on the inventory .

Johann Scholtz, an fairness analyst at Morningstar, wrote that UBS can extract worth from the acquisition. It’s in a significantly better place to implement a radical restructuring of Credit score Suisse’s enterprise than Credit score Suisse was, Scholtz wrote in a March 19 observe.

There are a number of facets of the deal that buyers should still be attempting to grasp. The primary is the pace of Credit score Suisse’s collapse, the lack of confidence within the financial institution prompted increasingly clients to withdraw their money, making a self-reinforcing downward spiral that additional broken the well being of the 167-year-old establishment.

The ultimate sale value of about $3 billion in inventory can also be curious. Credit score Suisse had a market capitalization of greater than $7 billion on the finish of final week, even after shares had been hammered for months.

The beneficiant authorities ensures for UBSa liquidity line of greater than $100 billion from the central financial institution and a loss assure from the Swiss authorities of virtually $10 billion might go away merchants questioning what the authorities noticed that made the transaction so pressing.

As well as, a set of bonds totaling about $17 billion, the so-called Additional Tier bonds, or AT1s, generally known as Contingent Convertible bonds or Cocos in different banks, have been worn out with the deal.

Cocos tends to pay increased curiosity as a result of they convert to fairness if sure situations are met, and Credit score Suisses was written off solely, though shareholders acquired some compensation within the takeover.

It is a startling improvement on condition that even unsecured bondholders often rank above fairness holders within the capital construction, Louis Gave of Gavekal Analysis stated in a observe. So for stockholders to get one thing and CoCo bondholders to get nothing raises critical questions on the true worth of CoCo bonds.

EU regulators issued an announcement on Monday saying Cocos within the EU would solely undergo losses after shareholders did.

Though Credit score Suisse’s issues have been largely of its personal making, the collapse of Silicon Valley Financial institution this month supplied the spark that despatched shoppers speeding to withdraw their deposits. The query now for buyers and clients is whether or not this merger will work.

Write to Andrew Welsch at andrew.welsch@barrons.com and Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com