Sergio Ermotti, chief executive officer of UBS, cautioned on Friday of difficult decisions regarding layoffs following the acquisition of Credit Suisse, which he said he hoped would be finalised in the coming days.

“We won’t be able to create, short term, job opportunities for everybody. Synergies is part of the story,” Ermotti said at an event organised by the Asset Management Association Switzerland in Bern.

“We need to take a serious look at the cost base of the standalone and combined organisations and create a sustainable outcome,” he added. “It will be painful.”

Switzerland’s top bank has stated that it wants to complete the transaction fast after agreeing in March to acquire its smaller Swiss rival as part of a rescue plan organised by Swiss authorities.

“Hopefully in the next few days it’s going to be done,” Ermotti said on Friday. “We are finalising the last the last few miles … we have more than 170 approvals from regulators.”

Ermotti, who oversaw UBS from 2011 to 2020, took over again as CEO in April to manage the largest banking transaction since the Great Recession.

Ermotti said Credit Suisse has many good individuals and capabilities, emphasising that it was a takeover and not a merger. He implied that its executives may play a larger role in the combined business than the first leadership team disclosed last month may suggest. Ulrich Koerner, the CEO of Credit Suisse, was the only member of the top management to change positions.

“We will have a more even distribution of jobs ..than the one I did myself,” he said. “When the dust settles down …the best thing for our clients and shareholders and our people is to have the best people in the jobs.”

Additionally, he argued that the new combined firm was not too big for Switzerland, despite having a balance sheet of $1.6 trillion, or almost double the size of Switzerland’s annual economic production.

In order to lower the likelihood of another pricey government-backed bailout, the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland has developed measures to cut UBS’s asset holdings following its acquisition of Credit Suisse.

“I don’t think we are too big for Switzerland,” Ermotti said, adding that in banking “size matters.”

(Adapted from MillenniumPost.in)