As chief executive of UBS Wealth management since 2009, and head of what is now clearly the group’s most important business, Jürg Zeltner, looking more youthful than a 25-year veteran of the bank has any right to, speaks to Euromoney as one of the most powerful figures on the UBS group executive board. He is pleased with his division’s re-emergence as an active asset manager, its return to the top of the Euromoney private banking rankings and with the success of its signature discretionary management products for high-net-worth clients. But he is restless to grow and improve the business in various ways, by developing its product mix, revenue streams and client profile.

Two characteristics set UBS apart from other private banks, says Bob McCann, head of UBS Wealth Management Americas. “First, we are truly global. Other banks claim to be, but if you look at their revenue streams they are not balanced internationally, or they are pulling out of international businesses to focus domestically. And second, wealth management is a core business accounting for over 50% of UBS’s total revenues.

The private banking industry has had to modernize as never before to keep pace with the global needs of clients, new regulation and rebuild trust. Change has not come easy, but for those wealth managers that have blended global capability with product expertise in local markets, they continue to stand out from the crowd.

In its home market, UBS has aroused plenty of popular antipathy as an embarrassment to the country for its frequent stumbles in the past five years. But as a business, it is doing reasonably well.

Investors and regulators will like its latest plan to pay part of bankers’ compensation in a new form of contingent convertible.

By cutting back its investment bank sharply, UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has laid down a challenge to competitors. It now seems that the private bankers wielding power at the top of UBS want to keep fair chunks of the investment bank. Has Ermotti found the keys to a resurgent UBS?

Regulators and shareholders are channelling their concerns over banks’ slow progress in shifting to new and sustainable business models to a new cadre of activist chairmen. Often experienced in the industry, independent of executive management and with strong personalities, these chairmen are increasing the pressure on bank CEOs to abandon unrealistic ambitions and reshape their banks to a new world. Expect more ructions ahead.

For some reason, the phrase “Denial is not a river in Egypt” resounds in my mind.

The decision by UBS to perform elective surgery on its own investment bank can be partly attributed to pressure from bank-stock analysts. It might be premature to hail the dawning of a new age of the analysts, but a group who had become best known for astonishingly inaccurate stock forecasts and fawning attitudes to bank CEOs has at least begun to redeem itself.

Long-suffering shareholders of UBS can take comfort that JPMorgan’s bank-stock analyst Kian Abouhossein feels their pain. Abouhossein, who is consistently at or near the top of industry rankings of bank analysts, has been an owner of UBS shares while he has touted UBS as his number-one bank-stock pick in recent years and produced price forecasts well above the prevailing market value.

Creates challenge to other banks; Capital-lite bank suited to low growth

UBS plans to strengthen its FX and precious metals business in the wake of October’s restructuring, which saw it shrink its investment bank and withdraw from a number of fixed-income businesses.

UBS is cutting 10,000 jobs in its investment bank and is essentially exiting the fixed income business as part of a brutal restructuring to slash costs and refocus on core businesses that include advisory, equities and foreign exchange under Andrea Orcel, who has been appointed chief executive officer of the investment bank.

The award of $104 million to UBS tax whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld in September showed that there is still good money to be made in banking. It just may come in the future from turning in your former colleagues and bosses to the authorities.

The financial crisis prompted wealth managers to focus more on investment advice. Such firms are winning back high net-worth clients. None more so than UBS Wealth Management.

UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has taken a giant step back in the latest attempt to revive the ailing firm by hiring his former Merrill Lynch colleague Andrea Orcel as co-head of investment banking.

Goldman Sachs has a problem but so does Bank of America. In late March, the chairman of banking and markets, Andrea Orcel, departed abruptly to take up a post as co-head of UBS’s investment bank. Commentators were surprised. Orcel had been at Merrill Lynch for two decades. Hailed as one of the top rainmakers of his generation, he had recently concluded the important UniCredit rights issue, on which Merrill acted as the global coordinator.

Tier 2 CoCo struggles; CS taps Swiss-franc investor base

UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has taken a giant step back in the latest attempt to revive the ailing firm by hiring his former Merrill Lynch colleague Andrea Orcel as co-head of investment banking.

New leadership and a revamped single-dealer platform (SDP) have injected fresh impetus into UBS’s FX business during the past 12 months.

Speak to people involved in philanthropy about impact investing and lots of contradictory phrases are trotted out. "It’s not new, but at the same time it’s very new," is one. "It’s a great opportunity, but there are lots of challenges," is another. For Mario Marconi, managing director and head of family services at UBS, the concept is simpler. "The idea of impact investing is to promote social and environmental good while at the same time applying an investment logic," he says.

UBS isn’t doing too badly for a bank supposedly in the midst of a terminal crisis.

Troubled Swiss bank reveals it may cut bonuses after all, but will it help or hinder it in the long term?

UBS to pare down investment banking and concentrate on wealth management.

Royal Bank of Scotland has hired Fabian Shey – the former global co-head of FX and money markets at UBS – as global head of futures, prime services and electronic markets in the bank’s fixed-income, currencies and commodities business.

Disclosures from UBS about the details of the alleged fraudulent trading that has cost the bank $2.3 billion raise more questions than they answer about the extraordinary episode.

Revamped pricing boosts turnover; profits from SNB intervention.

Trading scandal raises further questions about validity of investment bank; Does the integrated model work for UBS?

The trading scandal raises further questions about the validity of UBS’s investment bank and whether an integrated model works for the Swiss group. Experts say they should concentrate on wealth management.

Grübel should have stayed to steady the ship; Ermotti becomes fourth CEO in four years, but what are his credentials for the role?; and a lame duck chairman cannot be the right person to force through the changes that UBS urgently needs to make