UBS-Controlled Credit Suisse Throws 254 Manhattan Employees Overboard

The beleaguered global banking giant submitted to a UBS takeover in June in hopes of financial rescue. Massive job cuts have been prescribed as an antidote and recent filings show that the bank plans to cut nine percent of its Manhattan-based workforce.

| 19 Oct 2023 | 07:08

Global investment bank Credit Suisse, now grudgingly under UBS management after falling on hard times, is laying off 254 employees at its New York office. This comes four months after the UBS acquisition as part of a global restructuring.

The Credit Suisse report contained in a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) filing with the NYS Department of Labor states that the laid-off workers in Manhattan at the New York offices on Madison and 24th St. were being cycled out during a period from September 10 to the end of 2023. According to Financial News, most of them come from the investment bank, trading, and asset management divisions.

UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti warned in June that job cuts were a necessary, if painful step to “creating a sustainable outcome” for Credit Suisse as it struggles out emerge from its financial woes.

“We won’t be able to create, short term, job opportunities for everybody. Synergies is part of the story,” he said at a conference hosted by Asset Management Association Switzerland in Bern.

Although UBS wants to shed 35,000 Credit Suisse employees—more than half its workforce—over three rounds of cuts by the end of the year, the fate of the Manhattan employees may have already been sealed before the takeover. According to multiple reports, Credit Suisse had been culling personnel since the fall of 2022, including one-third of its investment banking team in China.

Credit Suisse did not respond to requests for comment about what kind of benefits package the Manhattan employees would be receive upon leaving. Unlike their counterparts in Switzerland, the Manhattan employees are not represented by a union, the WARN filing noted.