UBS US M&A bankers who fancy a change are welcome at BMO Capital Markets
As we have observed here a few times, UBS's US M&A bankers do not appear to be scaling the US M&A league tables as might have been hoped. In the first six months of this year, they ranked 22nd. This was better than their 23rd place ranking in 2025, but was not exactly top tier.
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While UBS waits for the sun to shine on its US M&A business, some of its veteran and more recently hired M&A bankers have been moving on. BMO Capital Markets is one of their destinations.
BMO has just hired Simon Smith, a US M&A managing director (MD) of considerable pedigree who turned up there yesterday. Smith spent 24 years at UBS and was latterly head of transportation and coal client coverage there. It might be supposed that Smith specialises in steam driven locomotive manufacturers, but maybe not.
Smith's arrival at BMO follows that of David Descoteaux, who joined from UBS in May as head of US M&A at the Canadian bank. Descoteaux spent nine years at UBS. He and Simon might be friends.
UBS declined to comment for this article. BMO didn't respond to an invitation to comment on Smith's arrival.
UBS's US M&A business has lost a few other people too. They include Richard Hardegree, an ex-Barclays technology and semiconductors banker, who left in May for Bank of America.
When UBS acquired Credit Suisse, some of Credit Suisse's US M&A bankers were displaced in favour of new hires from Barclays instead. Many of the ex-Credit Suisse people were disgruntled as a result and have been indulging in public displays of schadenfreude at UBS's apparently poor subsequent performance. In the Swiss bank's defence, it has not done as badly in the US this year when measured in terms of deals by volume.
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