(Bloomberg) -- Young Jin Yee quit her last job after less than six months to take on one of the hardest tasks in private banking: combining the Asia operations of UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse.

Now almost 10 months into her new role as UBS’s co-head of Asia-Pacific wealth management, the former international gymnast is making a mark.

Net new client funds brought in under Young’s remit came to almost $14 billion during the second half of last year, people familiar with the matter said. She’s using her ties with UBS investment bankers hailing from Credit Suisse to win business from ultra-rich clients. And former Credit Suisse operations in Southeast Asia, one of her areas, broke even early this year for the first time since the merger.

It amounts to a positive start for one of Asia’s highest-profile bankers, according to interviews with 11 people with knowledge of her work, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.

But challenges remain. One is to build the business in India and Australia, two booming — and increasingly important — wealth markets. Another is to manage layoffs and cut costs after the merger. Biggest of all is to bring together two very different cultures.

Whether Young succeeds will help determine if UBS can translate its size advantages in wealth management into higher profits and a bigger share of a fragmented market. It will also be a factor in the latest test of whether government-orchestrated rescues of financial giants ever really work.

“It’s a tough job,” said Martin Kuenzler, a former private-banking executive who spent 19 years at Credit Suisse. “Jin Yee will have to prove herself.” 

UBS announced in March 2023 that it was buying Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion) in a shock deal brokered by the Swiss government. Just before the takeover closed in June, Young had revealed her strategy as Asia-Pacific wealth head at Deutsche Bank AG, which she’d joined in January after almost two decades at Credit Suisse. Some 16 private bankers had followed her to Deutsche Bank, one of the biggest exoduses in recent Asian private banking history.

So it surprised many when Young was offered — and took — the job at UBS, starting to run the Asia-Pacific business in June alongside Amy Lo, a 29-year UBS veteran. Lo, who’s in her early 60s, handles Greater China from Hong Kong, while Young, 49, oversees the rest of the region from Singapore. Lo is also chair of global wealth management for Asia.

UBS wanted a former Credit Suisse person to help run the combined business and win back the more than $100 billion that panicked clients withdrew before Credit Suisse collapsed, people familiar with the matter said. Iqbal Khan, UBS’s global head of wealth management and a former Credit Suisse banker himself, personally recruited Young, one of the people said.

“I was offered an opportunity to co-lead the best and largest wealth manager in the region, together with Amy, whom I admire greatly,” Young said in emailed comments. “It was too big an opportunity to pass.”

One of Young’s overriding tasks is to help the world’s second-largest wealth manager after Morgan Stanley to gain a bigger market share. UBS wealth management oversees $3.9 trillion in client assets, but that’s just a fraction of the global pie, estimated at about $159 trillion by Bain & Co. and GlobalData as of the end of December. The two firms forecast the market to swell to around $195 trillion by the end of 2027.

Young has already made some progress. The almost $14 billion of net new client funds added under her remit from July to the end of December compared with roughly $10 billion attributable to Lo’s areas, people familiar with the matter said. 

Young’s close cooperation with Tan Kuan Ern, who was one of Credit Suisse’s top investment bankers, is helping, people familiar with the matter said. Tan and his team have handled major deals such as the purchase by United Overseas Bank Ltd., the Singapore lender shaped by the late billionaire Wee Cho Yaw, of Citigroup Inc.’s Southeast Asia retail assets announced in 2022. Entrepreneurs who do business with the investment bank can sometimes become lucrative private banking clients.

Former Credit Suisse wealth operations in Southeast Asia, which is part of Young’s remit, broke even in January for the first time since the merger, according to people familiar with the matter. 

But while net new money increased more in Asia-Pacific than any of the other three major regions in the last three months of 2023, operating profit was the lowest, largely due to a slowdown in China. Asia-Pacific’s cost-to-income ratio rose to 87.7% in the fourth quarter as a result of the merger, from just under 70% a year earlier. The combined headcount of UBS and Credit Suisse’s wealth management arms as of the end of December 2022, before the takeover, was more than twice the number for UBS’s largest competitors, HSBC Holdings Plc and DBS Group Holdings Ltd., according to the latest data from Hong Kong-based publication Asian Private Banker.

All this is adding to expectations for more layoffs. UBS started a round of about 70 job cuts in Asia-Pacific in March, mainly in Hong Kong and Singapore, people familiar with the matter said. UBS’s number of employees in Asia-Pacific had already dropped to about 1,100 as of the end of December, from more than 1,200 at the end of September. The decrease came from cuts and people leaving of their own accord.

One challenge for Young is to build UBS’s business in India and Australia, markets that are seen as a way to diversify beyond a faltering China. UBS exited India’s onshore business in 2014 and spun off its Australian wealth unit the next year. Now, it’s using the Credit Suisse teams that it acquired to make a comeback.

Young herself is less familiar with India and Australia, people with knowledge of the matter said. She has told staff that her focus for India is on the nation’s wealthy diaspora. But some have questioned whether she’s paying enough attention to the rapidly growing ranks of wealthy inside India, the people said.

UBS is the top foreign player in Australia and currently has the No. 1 wealth management business in the country, a spokesperson said. Non-resident Indians and ultra-high net worth people in India are equally important to UBS’s strategy, the spokesperson said.

Young’s biggest task is to integrate two different cultures, one known for a cautious approach to wealth management, the other seen as faster-moving and more cavalier. UBS has focused on safeguarding client assets and giving them access to lucrative hedge fund, private equity and venture capital investments, as well as advice on succession planning. Credit Suisse relied more on extending loans to wealthy entrepreneurs in emerging markets such as Indonesia to win their private banking business.

“The culture and the way decisions are made today at UBS Group and its subsidiary Credit Suisse would be much different from Credit Suisse when she was there,” said Mak Yuen Teen, a National University of Singapore professor who researches corporate governance. “It would be interesting to see if she can achieve the same success.”

So far, staff reaction to Young has been mixed, according to people familiar with the matter. Some see her as candid and efficient, while others question her loyalty after moving so soon from Deutsche Bank. That departure also disappointed executives at the German lender, people with knowledge of the matter said. A spokesperson for Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

“The decision to leave naturally impacted Jin Yee’s image within Deutsche Bank and maybe more among those that followed her from Credit Suisse,” said Danny Jones, founding partner of executive search firm Huddlestone Jones in Singapore. Still, “she was a natural candidate and surpassed any internal options.”

Young moved to Singapore from Taiwan when she was five. She received Singapore citizenship before she competed for the city-state in the Southeast Asian Games in individual rhythmic gymnastics in 1991 and 1993.

Young joined Citigroup in Singapore in 1998 before moving to DBS in 2000. She started at Credit Suisse in 2003, rising to the No. 2 position in Asia wealth. A fluent Mandarin speaker, she travels to work every day in a chauffeur-driven Toyota Alphard after ditching the black Rolls-Royce that she used at Credit Suisse. Her husband, a former private banker, sometimes picks her up after work in one of his sports cars.

“Jin Yee has taken on one of the largest leadership positions within the private banking sector in Asia,” Jones, the recruiter, said. “The spotlight is now on Jin Yee.”

--With assistance from Preeti Singh, Ambereen Choudhury and Joyce Koh.

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