UBS is reportedly closing its U.S. ABS business, according to a Dow Jones report that quoted an advance copy of a Thursday edition of Swiss weekly Handelszeitung.
A UBS representative has not returned a call for confirmation as of press time.
In early September, ASR reported (for the full story click
Byrne has since October been the president of BC Global Investments, according to his Linked in profile.
Ken Cohen, who joined UBS in May to head up the bank’s real estate and CMBS businesses, replaced Byrne as global head of ABS and MBS underwriting and origination. Cohen was previously at G2 Partners, a real estate finance and consulting firm, and earlier ran trading and loan origination for Lehman Brothers’ real estate finance and CMBS businesses.
Despite reported setbacks in its ABS business, UBS has been active in the CMBS space, with a reported transaction coming to market before yearend. The $750 million CMBS deal, according to a Bloomberg report, is with Citigroup and Natixis. Aside from this upcoming transaction, UBS has come to market with three deals this year with Deutsche Bank Securities under the DBUBS 2011-LC Series.
According figures published by ASR from Thomson Reuters as of Sept. 28, UBS was tenth place in the ABS Manager Rankings for public-144A transactions year to date. It had $1.9 billion sold and a 2% market share. It placed No. 13 over the same period in 2010 with $1.1 billion sold and a 1.2% market share, Thomson Reuters reported.
For a list of U.S. non-mortgage UBS-led ABS deals for 2011, please see the link below. The transaction list is from the ASR Scorecards database.
