"They're very arrogant people. They think they've won. They're short-termist, they're extremely focused on the bottom line, they're driven by results division by division. But what's the long-term strategy?"
In case you hadn't guessed, this is a senior Union Bank of Switzerland manager in London talking about his new colleagues (or masters) from Swiss Bank Corporation. He recalls the shock of the takeover, referred to at the time as a merger of equals: "It was real tanks-on-the-lawn stuff."
Three months on, the worst fears of the UBS foot soldiers have been confirmed: parts of the UBS Phillips & Drew investment bank are being cherry-picked to adorn the table of SBC Warburg Dillon Read. The rest will be spat onto the street.
The treatment of SG Warburg, bought in 1995, was not so very different. Marcel Ospel, the chief executive of both SBC and the future merged bank, referred to that purchase in terms of "the franchise" rather than the people who came with it. UBS in London may prove to have yielded up some nice franchises, but few if any of its people will be driving their own businesses, let alone having much say in running the investment bank.