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Fifteen years ago, New York City’s reputation as an international financial center was called into question when the giant Swiss bank UBS moved its North American headquarters to the Connecticut suburbs, where it built the largest trading floor in the world.
Now, though, UBS is having buyer’s remorse. It turns out that a suburban location has become a liability in recruiting the best and brightest young bankers, who want to live in Manhattan or Brooklyn, not in Stamford, Conn., which is about 35 miles northeast of Midtown. The firm has also discovered that it would be better to be closer to major clients in New York City.
As a result, UBS is seriously considering a reverse migration that would bring its investment banking division and up to 2,000 bankers and traders back to Wall Street and a new skyscraper at the rebuilt World Trade Center, according to real estate executives and city officials.
“They just can’t hire the bankers and traders they need,” said one landlord who has spoken with UBS but requested anonymity so as not to alienate a potential tenant.
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The move would be the latest sign that New York has regained its allure as a caldron for the young and creative. Six months ago, Google paid nearly $2 billion for a large building just north of the meatpacking district, in the same Manhattan neighborhood where many of its employees live.
“A key piece of the mayor’s economic strategy has been to make New York City a place people want to be,” Deputy Mayor Robert K. Steel said, “and more than ever the city is the ideal location for any company, like UBS, that succeeds by attracting a talented, motivated work force.”
A UBS trader in his 20s said that like many of his peers at the firm, he would have preferred a job in New York City, where he lives.
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In wooing UBS, New York City landlords have tried to capitalize on Connecticut’s recent decision to raise taxes to balance the state budget. Governor Malloy has come under fire from some business groups for his “shared sacrifice” approach, which combined an estimated $1.6 billion cut in government labor costs with $1.4 billion in increased income, sales and corporate taxes.
But it did not appear that UBS’s interest in moving stemmed from the tax increases. The firm’s review of its real estate needs and a possible return to Manhattan began many months ago, according to real estate executives who have talked to the company.
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UBS, then known as Swiss Bank, touched off cross-border recriminations and municipal hand-wringing in 1994, when it announced plans to move from its two Manhattan locations, one in Midtown and the other in the financial district, to Stamford. New York City, still in the throes of a deep recession, was already hurting after the defection of MasterCard to Westchester County.
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At the time, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani charged that Connecticut had broken a 1991 nonaggression treaty among New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, in which state leaders promised not to use special incentives to steal jobs from one another.
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U.S. Trust, Goldman Sachs, Chase, UBS and other financial institutions moved at least some of their operations across the Hudson River to New Jersey, although Goldman Sachs equity traders revolted in 2002 when the investment bank tried to relocate them to an expensive new tower in Jersey City, a mere mile from its Lower Manhattan headquarters.
Goldman slowly moved other employees over to Jersey City and then built a new headquarters in Manhattan, across West Street from the World Trade Center site.
