Last month, we noted that a group of UBS employees who “worked in operations and were responsible for securities movements and payments” had been escorted out of the building and told not to come back “pending an internal review into their conduct.” Now we’ve been informed they were recently told not to come back, period. If you’re a current employee or about to join the firm and are unclear on the rules, know this: it turns out UBS does in fact frown upon skimming some off the top for yourselves.

“The employees were transferring securities that UBS held to personal accounts and then just selling them in their personal account. Not sure how the bank didn’t know, but apparently it went on for a few years.

We were told last week that the employees in question were asked to resign and given severance packages. UBS declined to comment, other than to confirm that the people are “no longer with the bank.”

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To those who think the woman- an RBS staffer who was promoted twice while she was (maybe) having an affair with Goodwin- “impaired” his “decision-making capacity,” which ultimately resulted in the bank having 82% of its ass owned by the government, think again! An internal investigation has concluded that 1) the woman was no more of a distraction than a hobby 2) he didn’t empower her to make any “big” decisions and 3) Goodwin was fully capable of running RBS into the ground without anyone else’s help, thankyouverymuch.

The Royal Bank of Scotland employee at the centre of an alleged affair with Sir Fred Goodwin, its former chief executive, played no part in important strategic decisions at the bank, according to an internal investigation. People familiar with the probe said it focused on whether the employee, who remains at the bank, was involved in any key decision-making work, such as the bank’s acquisition of ABN Amro, judging credit risk, assessing regulatory issues or conducting internal audits. “We have only known about this for several weeks, and as soon as we did know we conducted an investigation,” said one person familiar with the process. “We are satisfied the employee in question did not compromise the bank in any way.”

[A] person with knowledge of the internal investigation said it was “slightly ludicrous” to suggest that Sir Fred’s decision-making capacity had been impaired by an extramarital affair. “There is no suggestion that he spent day after day locked away in a secret bolt-hole,” he said. “He went on holidays, he had hobbies. This was comparable.”

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“We’re not up to the level of earnings and profitability and sustained, responsible growth we know we can get this thing to,” Parsons told CNBC, ahead of the bank’s annual meeting in New York City. “I think that’s the assignment for this year.” [CNBC]

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As you may have heard, UBS has been going through a bit of a rough patch. Despite posting an annual profit (of 7.2 billion Swiss francs) for the first time since 2006, things just haven’t been the same since the crisis, and some are suggesting it never will be, writing that the bank “doesn’t have a chance” getting back to pre-crisis levels because “too much damage has been done.” Not helping things is the fact that there’s been very high turnover in the last couple months, which may have something to do with the fact that people have a need to get paid.

The last two months have seen a large turnover of staff and an overhaul of management at the top. In the last month alone, a new global head of securities, the co-head of fixed-income, currencies and commodities, and a top deal maker in Asia, traditionally a strong region for UBS, have all left. At the same time, the bank has announced new leadership for the crucial M&A business and new chiefs for investment banking for the Americas, Asia and Europe, among other changes. Just this week, UBS lost the head of its prime brokerage unit in Asia, as well as the co-head of its Asian industrials banking team.

UBS is struggling to pay enough to keep top talent as it works on the revamp, say headhunters and former UBS bankers, with some senior bankers not having received a bonus in several years. And while UBS paid dearly to attract a few heavy hitters, overall pay is too low to keep staff from jumping ship, they say. In February, the bank delayed by a week the announcement of bonuses while it reworked its plan to try to prevent bankers from leaving.

Not saying no one at UBS will ever get paid again but in order to account for a worst case scenario, let’s just say that. Any ideas how management can entice people not to quit/take a gig with them? As the Swiss are getting desperate, you could probably suggest just about anything and they might give it a shot. What if they could guarantee a guy pulling up to the Stamford office in a white Civic and demanding to speak to “the President” while brandishing a baseball bat at least once a week? Would that be something you’d be interested in? (That might do it for me.)

Signs Of Strain At UBS Investment Bank [WSJ]

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Assuming the last quarter is an indication of the next three and- fingers crossed- nothing goes catastrophically wrong, JPMorgan employees may be looking at raises next year.

Bankers at J.P. Morgan, the investment banking unit of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), are in line for a 34% raise this year, if the bank keeps paying at its torrid first-quarter clip.The investment bank set aside $3.3 billion for compensating its 26,494 workers in the first quarter. That’s equivalent to $124,330 for the quarter and projects to $497,320 for the year.

[Fortune]

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As we reported last week, when the earthquake hit, JPMorgan CEO James Dimon did not think twice about booking a flight to Japan to visit with employees and clients affected by the disaster. He arrived yesterday and, hearteningly, seems to have breathed new life into the area with his mere presence, lifting the spirits of those who were badly in need of a pick-me-up. Dimon offered “a silent prayer” for the victims of the ‘quake and delivered a “short but moving” speech to a sizable crowd, who was extremely happy to see him. “As part of the staff based in Japan, I was really encouraged by his visit,” a person at the bank told the Journal. As for what happened next, we don’t want to scare anyone but all Park Ave-based employees should be taking careful notes.

According to one person, snaking lines formed around the smiling CEO as people waited to get a photo with Mr. Dimon, who became a legend for steering the bank through the global financial crisis. The photo session went on for about two hours in the evening.

“It was almost like he was a Japanese pop idol,” the person said. Mr. Dimon also appeared on the trading floors to mingle with his staff earlier this morning.

While JPMorgan employees at home surely respect JD and perhaps even still get butterflies in their stomachs when glimpsing him in the building, few if any whip out a pitchbook or a breast for Dimon to sign. And one can’t but wonder if the contrast between how he was received in Tokyo and the reception he receives at home will stick out in his mind. If you’re at 270 and feel silly worrying, yet can’t get the idea out of your head that maybe JD will decide to relocate and abandon you, start thinking about what you can do to make him feel as loved as your counterparts in Japan. Sending him a care package while he’s gone with (photoshopped) pictures of you to remind him of your face would be a good jumping off point, as would slipping that you paid his hairdresser for snippets of those luscious locks, and asking him to be a sperm donor for your future child.

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Investment banks are scrambling to open branches and make their presence known in the Silicon Valley area because they are expecting a “huge wave” of mergers and acquisitions and financing deals in tech and media over the next two years, Kevin Covert, president and co-founder of boutique I-bank Covert and Co., told VentureBeat today.

Covert launched his own new bank today after leaving investment bank Montgomery & Co., because he says the opportunities right now for investors looking to capitalize on a white-hot startup climate on the West Coast were just too great to pass up.

“[I think] the media and tech industry will be leading the nation out of recession from the financial/housing crisis, because acquirers are now streamlined, flush with cash, and highly competitive,” said Covert.

As part of that change, the venture capital industry has gone through “major” changes, with a whole new investing climate emerging — all of which now has I-banks hungrily eyeing thousands of tech companies with great businesses still facing tight investing and a sluggish IPO market.

Covert was the primary architect of Montgomery’s investment banking business and helped establish the core M&A and private placement practices of the bank over the span of 10 years. He also founded the bank’s software and media groups.

While there, he oversaw the mergers and acquisitions of Musicmatch/Yahoo, Club Penguin/Disney, DailyCandy/Comcast, MySpace/NewsCorp, PilotSoftware/SAP, Grouper/Sony, ifilm/Viacom, Rent.com/eBay, Ribbit/BT, DWL/IBM and Element5/DigitalRiver.

He also captained the bank’s financing of Meebo, Realtime Worlds, WildTangent, Reactrix, Move Networks, KickApps, LegalZoom, Specific Media and VantageMedia.

While making those deals, Covert said he saw that many smaller I-banks are now beginning to realize the enormous opportunities they have to get in on the ground floor of some of the world’s hottest pre-IPO tech companies.

“Buyer and seller valuations are more aligned than in past five years,” said Covert, “and there are no dominant tech investment banks to serve this upcoming wave of deals. Large banks [like] Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Allen & Co. serve public companies, but it is the entrepreneurs and investors that desperately need quality M&A and financing services.”

“The old-school investment banking world is changing,” he added.

Companies: BT, Club Penguin/Disney, Comcast, covert and co, Dailycandy, DigitalRiver, DWL, eBay, Element5, Grouper, IBM, ifilm, Montgomery & Co., Musicmatch/Yahoo, MySpace, NewsCorp, PilotSoftware, Rent.com, Ribbit, SAP, Sony, Viacom

People: kevin covert

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

RBS CEO Stephen Hester was recently asked by Parliament to defend his bonus for 2011, which clocked in at around £7.7m. Some might argue the Brits had the right to do so in light of the fact that about 82 percent of the bank is owned by the government. The two sides brought slightly different opinions to the table, Hester being of the mind that the his paycheck was well-deserved, and the MP’s being in strong disagreement, given that RBS recently reported net losses for a third consecutive year.

Things got quite heated, with Labour MP Austin Mitchell asking, “What have you done for £7.7m? Is it that you produced an outstanding enormous profit for the bank, or is it because you are a greedy banker?” Hester, taking umbrage at the suggestion that a) he didn’t earn every pound of his package and that b) he was in anyway greedy sought fit to lay some truth on Mitchell and Co’s asses, telling them his number was “at the low end of comparable jobs in the UK and globally.” An interesting theory!

Here’s what some other bank CEO’s earned this year:

Jamie Dimon: £10.9m
Bob Diamond: £10.1m
Lloyd Blankfein: £7.9m
Josef Ackermann: £7.8m
James Gorman: £4.625m
Vikram Pandit: £0.0m
Oswald Grübel: £0.0m

So overall, Hester is actually more toward the middle on comp but if we’re comparing him to people with actual ‘comparable’ jobs (i.e. guys running firms who’ve only recently begun to emerge from the era of getting their asses handed to them, like Vickles and Grübel and/or were at one time a ward of the state), he’s making out pretty well. But you know what? Those are just numbers and whether he’s at the top end or the bottom shouldn’t actually matter because here’s what- no one’s got a gun pointed to his/her head that will go off if they don’t keep Hester happy. “No one’s forced to employ me,” he said. The bottom line is RBS’s board and shareholders want to pay Hest this much and if they didn’t they’d give him the boot. Speaking of which, let’s make sure Big Daddy sees a few more zeros next year, okay? This time around.

“It is in the hands of others how they want to pay me for that and it is up to me whether I want to do the job for that.”

You’ve all been warned.

RBS Boss: ‘My £7.7m Pay Is At The Low End’ [SN]

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The good news is it has nothing to do with tax evasion. The bad news is the bank may have manipulated Libor rates.

UBSsaid it received subpoenas from U.S. authorities investigating possible attempts to manipulate the setting of the London interbank offered rate.

The company received subpoenas from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, Zurich-based UBS said in its 2010 annual report published today. The bank also received an order to provide information to the Japan Financial Supervisory Agency concerning “similar matters,” it said.

“UBS understands that the investigations focus on whether there were improper attempts by UBS, either acting on its own or together with others, to manipulate Libor rates at certain times,” the bank said. “UBS is conducting an internal review and is cooperating with the investigations.”

But hey, did you hear? No new tax evasion charges!

UBS Says U.S. Authorities Are Investigating Possible Manipulation of Libor [Bloomberg]

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Apparently they were unaware Swiss banks aren’t supposed to do that anymore.

Four bankers with Switzerland-based Credit Suisse Group are accused of helping U.S. taxpayers hide as much as $3 billion in assets from the IRS. The conspiracy indictment was handed down Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. Arrest warrants have been issued for all four who are believed to be in Switzerland: Marco Parenti Adami, Emanuel Agostoni, Michele Bergantino and Roger Schaerer.

The indictment itself does not specify the bank as Credit Suisse, but a law-enforcement official with knowledge of the case confirmed the bank’s identity to The Associated Press but insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the case.

UBS execs wipe brows.

[AP]

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