This year the firm has already clinched an advisory role to Gillette alongside Goldman Sachs in the $57bn sale to Proctor & Gamble, and is sole adviser to Vodafone in its $4.4bn acquisition of Romania’s MobiFon and the Czech Republic’s Oskar Mobil. According to Dealogic’s fee-based league tables, UBS has elevated itself to fifth in global M&A – making it the highest ranking European bank.
Just as this year has started well, so 2004 was a very happy year for the group. Annual figures released in February showed that pre-tax profits were up 28%. They also revealed that the investment bank’s revenues were up 18% year-on-year at SFr4.54bn (€2.923bn) and contributed the lion’s share (40%) to overall group revenues of SFr10.674bn.
