ZURICH - The pressure on UBS from its own shareholders is becoming a chorus. Artisan Partners, a US asset manager that counts among the bank's major investors, has written to the board of directors arguing that the capital rules under consideration in Bern are excessive and punitive, that they would tie up billions more in capital and depress profitability, and that the bank should consider leaving Switzerland.
The letter, reported over the weekend, makes Artisan the second major investor to urge publicly what UBS itself has so far only hinted at. It landed days after the Council of States voted to make the bank back its foreign units with 90 percent hard equity, a requirement UBS estimates at about 16 billion dollars of additional CET1 capital.
The bank declines the advice
UBS does not share the analysis. The bank says it intends to continue operating its global business from Switzerland, while pressing for regulation it considers more proportionate and better aligned with international standards. Chairman Colm Kelleher warned in September that UBS may have to rethink Switzerland if it cannot compete from here, and the bank has studied the precedent of Nordea, which moved its headquarters across a border for friendlier rules. But moving a balance sheet of UBS's size is a threat easier made than executed, and both sides in Bern know it.
Why the timing matters
The investor offensive is aimed at a specific window. The National Council's economic committee takes up the bill on 26 and 27 October, with the FDP's Hans-Peter Portmann preparing a 75 percent compromise and the SVP weighing its own variant. UBS reports third-quarter results on 28 October, giving chief executive Sergio Ermotti a stage in the middle of the committee's work. A shareholder letter arguing for departure, days before both, is not a coincidence; it is lobbying by other means.
What the letters cannot change is the arithmetic waiting at the end. The Social Democrats have said they will collect signatures for a referendum against any outcome they consider bank-friendly, which means that even a softened law could face the voters. The capital fight that began with the Credit Suisse collapse will be settled, one way or another, by 2027.