UBS plans $3bn share buyback after bumper profits

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UBS announced a plan to hand investors $3bn through share buybacks this year after a strong performance at its investment bank helped it rack up bumper net profits of $770mn for the final quarter of 2024.

The Swiss bank’s quarterly profit was significantly higher than analysts’ forecasts of $483mn, while revenues jumped 7 per cent compared with the same period in 2023 to $11.6bn.

On the back of the better than expected results, UBS said on Tuesday that it would buy back $1bn of its shares in the first half of 2025 and a further $2bn in the second half of the year.

The lender said that it had benefited from strong demand from institutional and private clients during the final three months of the year, boosted by an increase in investors’ risk appetite following Donald Trump’s victory in November’s US presidential election.

The results mark a fourth consecutive quarter of profit at the Swiss lender as it continues to integrate its former rival Credit Suisse, which it acquired in 2023 in a deal orchestrated by Swiss regulators.

Pre-tax profits at UBS’s investment bank came in significantly ahead of expectations at $486mn, but the bank’s wealth management unit attracted fewer net new assets than expected. 

UBS’s wealth management business — especially in the crowded but fast-growing US market — is regarded as an important part of its strategy to capitalise on its acquisition of Credit Suisse.

“Throughout 2024, we maintained robust momentum as we captured growth in global wealth and asset management and gained market share in the investment bank in the areas where we have made strategic investments,” said UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti.

UBS added that “constructive market conditions” continued into the first quarter of 2025, but warned that investor sentiment could be hit by a “clouded macroeconomic outlook outside the US [and] increased uncertainties around global trade”.