UBS Bank is freezing new hires in parts of its wealth management business as part of a restructuring process aimed to cut costs, news reports suggest. According to the reports, the freeze was for external hires in IT and support positions, and any new positions requested are scrutinised and require senior management approval.The front office, consisting of client-facing jobs, is not affected by the restrictive hiring process. In May, the bank had said in a memo that it aimed to cut costs, in the wealth management unit, by hundreds of millions of dollars. The new organisational structure would help give the bank greater consistency and standardisation, UBS wealth management head Juerg Zeltner said at that time.
