UBS sells Spanish wealth management business to Singular Bank

ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS Group has agreed to sell its Spanish wealth management business to Madrid-based Singular Bank, the Swiss bank announced on Monday, its second exit from a European market in the past 12 months.

UBS said it would sell UBS Gestion to Singular for an undisclosed amount. German newspaper Handelsblatt said Singular Bank would pay UBS between 200 and 250 million euros ($ 291 million) for the subsidiary.

The deal follows UBS’s exit from Austria last December when it sold its business to wealthy clients to the Liechtenstein private bank LGT.

UBS, the world’s largest asset manager with over $ 3 trillion in assets under management, said the recent sale did not mean a departure from the European market.

“The European wealth management activities are and will remain a central and strategic core business of UBS,” said Christl Novakovic, CEO of UBS Europe SE and Head Wealth Management Europe at UBS.

UBS’s wealth management and investment banking businesses in Spain were not part of the deal, which was slated to close in the third quarter of next year.

The sale includes the transfer of all employees, customer relationships, products and services of the domestic wealth management business from UBS Spain to Singular Bank.

UBS said its domestic wealth management business in Spain had been profitable in recent years, but it agreed to sell it after deciding it was better off with a focused wealth manager based in the country.

($ 1 = 0.8593 euros)