Hi community
my finpension portfolio is based on CSIF funds. Does anyone have a clue what the UBS merger/takeover might mean for this? Are there arguments for or against switching to other funds, in this case swisscanto funds?
I’m no longer adding to CSIF funds because I don’t know if they will continue to exist in the same form in the long term, but I also don’t sell them (it would cost fees and I also don’t see any point in doing that) and will only act if mergers are announced with a change of index.
I am not so worried about it because mutual funds are well protected under Swiss law and they can easily be transferred (by selling the asset management unit) between fund providers as the assets belong to us, not to the custodian bank or to the provider.
I expect they will just be rebranded as UBS, or merged into UBS’s own Swiss passive funds offering. I hope UBS will not discontinue those that cover indexes UBS did not have (like emerging markets or Eurozone equities).
They will be integrated into UBS’s portfolio. They won’t just close these funds without good reason and risk losing the invested capital in those funds. No reason to change to any other fund.
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It’s true, although closing a fund is rarely done without merging it into another fund.
If UBS offers a passive fund with exactly the same underlying index as a CSIF fund and a comparable or lower TER (or lower than the lowest competitor), it would make sense to merge them and investors are likely not to disinvest since this is no material change.
I can imagine an exception for funds marked as retirement and eligible for a refund of the US withholding tax.
This was akready discussed in length here → What would happen if Credit Suisse goes bust? - #36 by Burningstone
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