As cuts loom at UBS, Credit Suisse veterans are doing fine on generous pensions
It's mid-April, which means it's round about the time when UBS is expected to make its next round of job cuts after acquiring Credit Suisse. Sources say there's trepidation internally after an unusually large proportion of people appeared to receive poor performance ratings in appraisals earlier this year.
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As the cuts loom, though, some people with Credit Suisse on their CVs are doing fine: people who worked there many years ago.
Until around 2000, people who worked for Credit Suisse - like those who worked for other banks at the time, were given defined benefit pensions guaranteeing inflation-proof payments during retirement, based on their final salaries with the bank.
UBS isn't commenting, but when it acquired Credit Suisse it bought out Credit Suisse's defined benefit pensions, as would be expected during a merger.
For many ex-Credit Suisse people currently working at UBS, the generous defined benefit scheme is a reminder of a mythological past. There are (possibly spurious rumours) of associates who spent two years with the Swiss bank in the late 1990s amassing pension pots of £160k and of former managing directors still receiving six figures a year.
One ex-Credit Suisse director on holiday in Bali tells us his generous defined benefit pot starts to pay when he's 57. "I left 25 years ago, so it's compounded," he adds. "They've tried to buy it out every so often."
Credit Suisse people who didn't get the defined benefit pensions weren't so lucky. Employees who received stock bonuses and bonuses paid as AT1 bonds, ended up losing $400m+ in bonuses after the rushed merger.
A current ex-Credit Suisse trader at UBS said many people there are waiting to be laid off so that they can collect severance pay. Credit Suisse was a superior place to work, he says: "The politics at UBS are intense, and legacy UBS people are blaming us for their poor bonuses last year."
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