Oswald Gruebel, the CEO of all of UBS worldwide, insists that the Swiss bank's U.S. wirehouse is "not for sale." Yesterday UBS revealed its second quarter results, and Gruebel addressed the wirehouse sale rumors on the earnings call. In fact, Gruebel wants to invest more in the business.

"We must have a leading wealth management business in the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe and Middle East regions," Gruebel reportedly said on the call.

AdvisorOne, InvestmentNews, On Wall Street, Registered Rep, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported on the news.

The wirehouse earned pretax profit of $165 million for the quarter, up from a $61 million loss a year ago. Its quarterly revenue rose 12 percent year-over-year to $1.51 billion, giving it a margin of more than 10.9 percent. Its advisor base grew 1.36 percent year-over-year to 6,862 on June 30, 2011.

Rumors about a merger between UBS' and Wells Fargo's wirehouses have swirled since at least early 2009, when Citi and Morgan Stanley unveiled their plans to create the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney wirehouse joint venture [see MFWire.com, 2/3/2009]. Yet Bob McCann, CEO of UBS Wealth Management Americas (the wirehouse), has insisted since he joined up in October 2009 that no such deal is in the works [see MFWire.com, 10/27/2009 and see MFWire.com, 3/15/2011]. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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