[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by sickofnewyorkcity

I consulted for UBS and the said it was due to the inability to recruit top talent so the left CT for NYC. Most of the front office people went to NYC.

One problem I read they have is a lot of the top talent live in Manhattan and commute to UBS and they want to stay in Manhattan as opposed to living near Stamford to make it easier if they one day get an even better job with a rival Wall St. firm.

[sickofnewyorkcity]

Originally Posted by 7 Wishes

One problem I read they have is a lot of the top talent live in Manhattan and commute to UBS and they want to stay in Manhattan as opposed to living near Stamford to make it easier if they one day get an even better job with a rival Wall St. firm.

That's exactly what I said

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by sickofnewyorkcity

That's exactly what I said

You said "to recruit", I was adding that it's an issue with existing workers too.

[bobtn]

A lot will depend on how the Freedom Tower's occupancy rate is. I'm sure the financing was tied to bank covenant's which most likely are tied to occupancy rates, so if it is too low in say 2015, 2018, 2021, etc..I'd bet NY makes them an offer to relo massively too good to forgo. Very often, raiding states and cities are offering up front money knowing it offsets lease breakage fees elsewhere.

[Beeker2211]

Bob,

I think a lot of the Freedom Tower (or whatever they are calling it now) is going to be mostly media companies like Conde Nast and refilling with State/City/Port Authority offices. It doesn't seem to have noticeably dump supply of office space like the Twin Towers did in the 1970s.

As for UBS, they have much bigger fish to fry than which people go where. There were issues at the overseas desks not thattt long ago and the head honchos in Zurich are trying to maintain some semblance of "normalcy." While I want to see them do well in Stamford I think the "hard to find talent" argument a bit of a red herring honestly.

[CTbrooktrout]

Interestingly enough RBS has not been complaining about difficulty in recruiting talent. Had an interview there a couple years ago. Didn't get the gig unfortunately but the building was excellent and the mood as pretty encouraging.

[bobtn]

UBS adding 1,000 jobs in downtown Nashville - Nashville Business Journal

I know this just broke, but are there any UBS employees who know how many relos are involved, and from where?

[RAF73]

Shared services implies everything from IT to accounting to tax and legal. UBS has a lot of those types of jobs presently sitting in the former GTE/Purdue Pharma building on Atlantic Street across from the mall; they're not in the Washington Boulevard superstructure that houses the trading floor. I would imagine that some or all of these positions would be affected.

Last I knew UBS was trying to leverage a threat to move their equities trading business to 1 World Trade (aka Freedom Tower) in effots to get Connecticut to cut them additional financial concessions on the Stamford business. But there is simply no way that UBS will move operations back into Manhattan 100%; the Swiss would need one hell of an economic incentive to even think about that.

It's not commonly known but one of the reasons UBS/SBC management considered the move up to CT in the first place was in reaction to the initial WTC bombing back in the early 90s. It was publicly sold as economically motivated but the fear of business interruption was huge factor. I can't believe that thinking has changed so I wouldn't look for the CT trading/front office biz to go anywhere.

Besides, it's not like that building would have another use aside from perhaps an airplane hangar.

[bobtn]

Originally Posted by RAF73

It's not commonly known but one of the reasons UBS/SBC management considered the move up to CT in the first place was in reaction to the initial WTC bombing back in the early 90s. It was publicly sold as economically motivated but the fear of business interruption was huge factor. I can't believe that thinking has changed so I wouldn't look for the CT trading/front office biz to go anywhere.

Besides, it's not like that building would have another use aside from perhaps an airplane hangar.

I wonder if that has a lot to do with the Nashville announcement. Perhaps they want to disperse people away from the east coast.