BEIJING (Reuters) -UBS has received regulatory approval to fully own Beijing-headquartered UBS Securities, the Swiss bank said on Friday, completing a key step in its consolidation of business operations in China after its merger with Credit Suisse.
With approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, UBS will acquire an additional 33% stake in the brokerage from Beijing State-owned Assets Management and raise its stake to 100%, a UBS press release showed.
The approval wraps up a series of complicated transactions following UBS’s merger with Credit Suisse, including the former’s sale of a 36.01% stake in Credit Suisse Securities in China to BSAM.
“Moving to a full ownership position in UBS Securities marks an important milestone for our integrated strategy in the region, allowing us to further expand our investment bank and wealth management services in China,” Iqbal Khan, UBS’s president Asia Pacific and co-president global wealth management, said in the press release.
UBS Securities, founded in 2006, became the first foreign majority-owned securities firm in China in 2018.
(Reporting by Ethan Wang, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo. Editing by Mark Potter)
