UBS’ share price slid by as much as 8.8 percent on Tuesday following fourth-quarter results, shaving nearly 5.5 billion off the Swiss bank’s market capitalization. But CEO Sergio Ermotti isn’t particularly worried.
A slew of factors – outflows in UBS’ key private bank unit and worryingly big lending exposure to oil and gas players – weighed on the stock following the result. But Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti isn’t particularly worried.
«It’s like complaining about a referee after the match,» Ermotti, a keen footballer who made it into the reserve team for Switzerland’s national team in his teens, told journalists on Tuesday in Zurich.
Sergio Ermotti still puzzled
«If I put it in the context of the banking sector, looking at the competition, I haven’t seen anybody’s stock going up after (earnings) reports, which may tell you a little bit about the psychology of markets,» said Ermotti, who has second-guessed analyst estimates before.
Ermotti said he is sometimes «still puzzled, to put it diplomatically» about the quality of consensus estimates, given many underlying factors of UBS’ business are widely known.
