First UBS's head of technology left. Now tech people are being cut

It's not just Citi. UBS's intention to cut jobs in early 2026 has also been well-flagged. And those cuts are also approaching.

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Bloomberg reports that UBS will start a new round of job cuts "soon" and implies that they may afflict technology staff more than others. UBS says it's still running two separate IT systems in Switzerland (UBS's and Credit Suisse's) and that it intends to shut one and create "synergies". 

Up to 3,000 jobs will go as a result. The timeline for their disappearance is between now and early 2027.

Coincidentally or not, the cuts follow the disappearance of Mike Dargan, UBS's former group COO and chief technology officer, who left at the end of December for digital bank N26. 

Dargan, who spent nine years at UBS after joining from Standard Chartered, was assigned one of the Swiss bank's most stressful jobs after the Credit Suisse acquisition. It included moving 1.3m Credit Suisse customers with 110 petabytes of data are involved onto the UBS platform while also closing 3,000 Credit Suisse applications and 40,000 Credit Suisse servers. 

With the Credit Suisse system seemingly being shut down, it appears that neither Dargan nor some members of his team are now required. This should be no surprise: even in 2023, UBS said it planned to close 90% of Credit Suisse's IT applications.  

IT people may not be the only ones cut, though. UBS declined to comment on the cuts when we inquired last week, but sources at the bank have suggested the cuts may be cross department and impact 15% of some teams. 

UBS announces bonuses in mid-February, so anyone let go soon will go without a bonus. It's thought that this year's bonus pool at the bank may not be the best.

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