Hello everyone!
Certain(of course one of many) Unique big Bank from Switzerland requires its new employees to transfer all positions to them during first 2 months.
Did anyone had experience transferring US ETFs (vt/voo) from IBKR to Swiss Brokers? Is it even possible? I believe people are not too keen to close positions with potential loss otherwise.
And I wonder if such requirement is legal…
You signed the contract, you need to follow it.
(Or face consequences of not doing so)
Im not implying people should not follow the contract. Mostly interested if it is possible to transfer US ETFs to that certain swiss bank. Maybe other people here have this experience
Yes it is possible, it can even be done via the IBKR web portal directly and IBKR provides a list of known brokers that it can transfer to.
How about telling the name of the bank? How on earth would other people be able to share their experience if the don’t know which bank we are talking about?
So you’re saying that everything in a contract must be legal and followed because it’s in a contract? This is not how law works…
(Btw I’m not saying that this specific requirement is illegal)
it is written, it is UBS
Don’t know about UBS but works fine with some other swiss brokers (took 3-4 days)
No I haven’t said it’s legal or not legal.
I said that one should usually
Today, I leared that UBS stands for Unique big Bank from Switzerland! 
I was hoping this was a troll as that would simply be genius.
As to your situation: an alternative is to simply sell the ETFs and buy them again.
You can hold and buy/sell US ETFs at UBS.
You‘ll just lose 15% of the dividends as it‘s a Swiss broker.
recoverable through DA-1 (under conditions)
This is a completely abbreviated description. This only applies if the entire content of the contract is legal and does not contradict mandatory law.
If a contractually stipulated obligation contradicts mandatory law, I as an employee naturally have no obligation to comply with it, even though I have signed the entire contract. The clause in question is simply null and void. Any negative consequences are contestable. As an employee, I can therefore sign a contract that contains clauses that are void because they contradict mandatory law. If I have to face negative consequences as a result, legal action can be taken against them.
I would therefore first clarify whether the contractual obligation is even legal, i.e. whether it does not contradict mandatory law.
What mandatory law does it contradict?
I thought that‘s one downside of using a Swiss broker? You get 70% of the dividends of which only 15% are recoverable?
No, it’s just you have extra withholding, but they’re equally recoverable.
You are talking about one of the biggest bank out there with a very solid legal team.
UBS definitely does not want to get fined by any financial market authority because you as relationship manager had insider information and traded securities.
If they make an exception for you, they must do that for all other employees as well - the bank cannot handle this extra administrative task to check, what you traded and if it was within the allowance.
Therefore:
But then it’s Switzerland, best case you’re out of a job and get a few months of compensation sometimes later if you win against your employer.
(Unlike other countries, winning doesn’t give you your job back)
As I said before, I did not say that this specific clause was illegal. I merely said that the fact that something is in the contract does not mean that it is legal. Even a bank like UBS could have a clause in a contract that could contradict mandatory law. So far, there may simply not have been a court ruling on the matter. Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge…
One is the question of the legal situation, the other is the question of the legal consequences. I agree with you that, depending on the situation, legal action may not pay off.
As a UBS employee it may be able to get UBS funds for essentially zero fees/transaction costs, don’t know if this is the case, I am just speculating.
Unconstructive bit of post: I get very triggered by these posts, see them on reddit r/antiwork when people claim that having a notice period of 3 months is illegal in their country because the labour law (from 1850) says “you can pick up thine hat and leave before dusk”. Total case of wanting to have a cake and eat it too.
Other than that…Swiss broker it is 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKcAYMb5uk4