Putting all our eggs in China's basket was a mistake: UBS

HONG KONG (March 29): UBS Group AG, which built an Asian investment-banking powerhouse around the strength of its China business, is finding that excessive reliance on one single market can be a bad thing.

Sam Kendall, who was promoted last year to run the regional investment bank, is trying to widen UBS’s scope by assigning more bankers a pan-Asian focus and pushing them to pursue deals that aren’t directly linked to the health of Chinese markets. While Kendall stressed that China is still a crucial market for UBS, he acknowledged the bank hasn’t paid enough attention to other parts of Asia.

“We were 100 percent focused on China,” Kendall said in a recent interview. “That is good when China is really going well. When China doesn’t go well, it means you haven’t necessarily got the agility in your business."

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