UBS unveils new West Kowloon hub to tap Greater Bay Area wealth

UBS has drawn back the curtains on its new Hong Kong headquarters in West Kowloon, a 20-storey tower with a client floor built for meetings, dinners and events, as the Swiss lender anchors its regional presence to tap growing wealth across the Greater Bay Area.

About 3,500 UBS staff, currently spread across five offices, including Two IFC in Central, are due to start moving in during the fourth quarter.

UBS Tower sits within Sun Hung Kai Properties’ International Gateway Centre. It has about 500,000 square feet of office space, including the bank’s largest trading floor in Asia-Pacific.

UBS has not disclosed its rent. Net effective rents averaged HK$28.5 per square foot per month in West Kowloon in November 2025, against about HK$92 in top Central locations, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The investment management firm Qube Research & Technologies would take over about 146,000 square feet across six floors at Two IFC from early 2027, space that UBS is vacating, international media reported in December 2025.

UBS Group CEO Sergio Ermotti attended a soft opening on November 4 and told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview that the building marked a new chapter for UBS in the region. A grand opening is planned for March next year.

“It’s quite interesting to see our building being above the high-speed rail station that goes to Shenzhen, which is where a lot of this innovation and wealth is created,” he said.

The location “enhances UBS’s connectivity to the Greater Bay Area and international destinations”, the bank said in a statement issued on November 6.

The client floor, which the SCMP was the first media outlet to visit, is anchored by the Client Theatre. The dome-shaped venue has a 270-degree LED video wall, and movable walls can reshape it into a semicircular space.

UBS said in a written response that “it was the first immersive event venue” in its global office network.

The meeting rooms are styled differently, which the bank said was to suit clients’ preferences. The Chalet meeting room has a Swiss-inspired feel, with a fireplace, while the Garden Room is dressed with greenery.

A parlour room is hidden behind a door accessible by pressing the bank’s three-key logo on a wall. The room is named after the year UBS was formed through the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation – 1998.

More than 50 works from the UBS Art Collection, which holds more than 30,000 pieces, are displayed on the floor. Among them is Edward Ruscha’s Brother, Sister (1987), which previously hung at UBS’s New York headquarters and now greets visitors to the client floor.

The collection features artists from Asia, including Leelee Chan of Hong Kong, Chen Wei and Song Dong from mainland China, Suki Seokyeong Kang of South Korea and Tuan Andrew Nguyen of Vietnam.