UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest lender, may move the staff of its U.S. investment bank from Stamford, to the World Trade Center in Manhattan by 2015, Bloomberg News reports, citing a person with direct knowledge of the plan.
Contacted by HBJ Today Wednesday, a UBS spokeswoman dismissed the report as “speculation” and abruptly hung up.
Spokesmen for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who is Stamford’s former mayor, did not return repeated phone calls Wednesday for comment.
According to Bloomberg, some employees from equities and investment banking have already relocated from UBS’s Stamford location, which houses the world’s biggest trading floor, to other offices in New York City, the person said. The rest would be moved in coming years, said the person, who declined to be identified because plans for the transfer haven’t been publicly disclosed.
Meanwhile, Real Estate Finance & Investment is reporting that UBS has tapped CB Richard Ellis to search for 750,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan.
Catherine Smith, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, e-mailed to HBJ Today a statement Wednesday in which she said her agency is in regular contact with UBS and has affirmed the state’s commitment to keeping them in the state.
But she also indicated that her agency awaits UBS’ decision along with everyone else.
“It is our understanding the company has made no long-term decisions as to the future of its operations,” Smith said.
UBS completed its Stamford expansion in 2002, creating a trading floor the size of two football fields for 1,400 people. The office is about an hour by train from Manhattan’s Grand Central Station. UBS leases more than 3 million square feet of office space for various operations in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region, said Torie von Alt, a spokeswoman for the Zurich-based bank.
“We routinely evaluate our space allocation as these leases expire and/or space becomes available,” von Alt said in an e-mailed statement. “Movement of personnel is a constant in any active business.”
UBS is in discussions with New York developer Larry Silverstein for occupying about 800,000 square feet at Three World Trade Center, one of four towers slated to be built on the 16-acre site, according to another person familiar with the talks. The person declined to be identified because the discussions are private. Currently, UBS’s biggest New York City offices are at 299 Park Avenue and 1285 Avenue of the Americas.
