Suni Harford was handed one of the most challenging tasks of her career in early 2023 when UBS took over the ailing Credit Suisse in a $3.2 billion deal brokered by the Swiss government.
The transaction added $400 billion in assets under management to UBS Asset Management, the unit she leads as president, bringing it to around $1.6 trillion.
Months after the deal closed, she continues to add to her to-do list even as she strives to move the integration along as quickly as possible.
"Momentum is my friend. Time is not," said Harford. "As soon as I take too long to do something, I'll start moving backwards, and that's really hard to recover from."
But speed is not the only priority for Harford as she works to integrate Credit Suisse's asset management business. She also is focused on empathy and open communication, in part to combat the rumors that can fill an information vacuum.
"It's so hard and stressful on everybody," Harford said.
The work began shortly after the merger was announced on March 19. There were town halls, one-on-ones with top Credit Suisse executives and a gathering of management teams from both firms, Harford said. One key has been treating the union as a straightforward transaction, rather than some kind of rescue operation.
"It's about a merger of two really good firms, and we've had that attitude from the beginning," said Harford, who notes that intensive communication efforts continued throughout the summer.
Another key is familiarity between the two firms. During an early town hall in Zurich, for example, Harford asked how many of the 800 attendees worked for UBS, how many worked for Credit Suisse and how many had worked for both. The highest number of hands went up for both, Harford said.
"It … set this tone of 'This is going to be OK,'" Harford said. "For all the attention in the press about culture, there's a very similar culture between the two firms in asset management."
However, there also are some differences. One is in the two firms' relative standings on third-party measures of sustainability and environmental impact.
UBS has been a leader in rankings from the likes of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark. New products introduced over the last year include a customizable UBS Global Equity Climate Transition Fund and innovative private markets strategies in areas such as cold storage and energy storage.
Harford, meanwhile, led the effort to create a climate roadmap for UBS, outlining how it will reduce carbon emissions across its portfolio. "My role is to make sure we have what we need to get that done," said Harford, who was named this year as group executive board lead for sustainability and impact for the combined company.
Credit Suisse has been an innovator in some areas. In 2022, for example, the firm was the structurer and joint bookrunner on so-called "rhino bonds," a bond issue whose proceeds were directed to protection and conservation of rhinoceroses. The issuer was the World Bank.
"So now we get smart on what they did to see if we can collectively replicate that and do more of that as an entity," said Harford.
However, Credit Suisse has not historically performed as well on outside sustainability rankings, and its addition is likely to hurt how well UBS ranks, Harford said. Credit Suisse, for example, does more fossil-fuel lending.
UBS is planning to bring its new assets up to speed, Harford said. But to counter any potential downgrades on independent sustainability measures, the company has already started talking to rating agencies. For example, she said, UBS is seeing if they can revise their ratings more quickly than they otherwise might to capture any progress.
On the asset management side, Harford sees the two businesses as complementary. Credit Suisse, for example, adds a business in collateralized loan obligations, one that UBS has been looking to grow.
"We don't do loan products of any kind here at UBS Asset Management," Harford said. UBS does have private credit capabilities.
Credit Suisse also has a small U.S. commodities business, while UBS is active in Europe. Another new addition is Credit Suisse's quantitative funds, an area where UBS did not previously have expertise, Harford said.
As a result, UBS was able to quickly draw up an organizational structure for the combined firms, reassuring both employees and clients that no major changes were in store, Harford said.
Areas of overlap include real estate in Switzerland, where the two companies have a combined 51% of the listed Swiss equity market for real estate, Harford said.
"That would imply a tremendous amount of concentration risk," she said. However, their holdings are distinct. UBS is more into high-end multifamily projects, while Credit Suisse has a higher exposure to offices.
While real estate contributes to the bottom line at UBS Asset Management, it also has played a role in the company's response to the war in Ukraine.
The company has raised $56 million for Ukrainian refugees. Inspired by the fundraising effort, employees began looking for other ways to help. A team in Basel hit on the idea of using empty apartment buildings held in UBS real estate funds to house people fleeing the conflict, said Harford, who brought the idea to UBS's executive board.
"This was the whole firm coming together all the way up to the board of directors, and I think employees saw that," Harford said. "Then, all it takes is one person to say, 'You know what? I think that's a great idea.'"
