Something bad has happened in IBD at UBS

Something good is going on at Deutsche. Something bad is going on at UBS.

League tables from information provider Dealogic show that Deutsche Bank consolidated its position as Europe's leading bank across M&A, ECM and DCM in the first quarter, increasing its share of fees from 7.2% to 8.0% vs. the first three months of 2010.

UBS, on the other hand, had a disastrous first quarter, reducing its overall share of European investment banking fees from 6.4% to 3.3%. In ECM, it went from 4th place to 9th place. In DCM it went from 5th place to outside the top 10. And in M&A, it went from 2nd to outside the top 10 too.

Overall, Dealogic estimates that UBS's European investment banking revenues went from $266m in Q1 2010, to $150m in Q1 2011.

This is all a bit worrying given that UBS hired 168 people in IBD globally last year, of whom 44 were MDs and MDs.

Nor are UBS's travails necessarily limited to the past three months. The bank's ECM revenues collapsed globally in the first nine months of last year.

Relying on the reshuffle

Unsurprisingly, UBS has been doing a bit of reshuffling in its European M&A ranks.

And if this doesn't work? Oswald Grubel's admission in February that if revenues don't come through UBS will have to "cut expensesvery quickly', could yet provide prescient.