UBS plans more jobs in downtown Nashville

• Company expanding footprint at downtown tower%2C plans Williamson County wealth management office.

Swiss bank UBS plans to add 50 percent more than the 1,000 jobs originally targeted for its business solutions center in downtown Nashville.

"We're very excited about where we are today, and I'm very comfortable saying this time next year we'll have 1,500 people," said Bob McCann, CEO of UBS Wealth Management Americas.

Separately, the company is looking to add a wealth management office in Williamson County that would have roughly 20 financial advisors plus support staff. UBS has eight wealth management offices statewide that have about 220 employees, a number that McCann also expects to grow to roughly 270 over the next year.

Last summer, UBS opened the Nashville business solutions center after signing a lease to occupy two floors, 98,000 square feet of space, at the former Regions Center now known as UBS Tower.

Initially, plans called for 1,000 jobs there by this year's end. UBS has more than 800 employees at UBS Tower, including about 230 jobs from a previous local service center plus another 600 added.

To accommodate the expected growth, the company has exercised its options for and is renovating two additional floors to add nearly 40,000 square feet of space with capacity to seat 400 more workers.

With that expansion, more than 70 percent of overall office space at UBS Tower is leased, with the state's attorney general's office and Department of Children Services to the move there this summer. Including the retail space, the tower is 58 percent leased.

UBS' local business solutions center provides mostly technology and operations support for the company's wealth and asset management and investment banking businesses. Some legal staffers were added and McCann sees more types of jobs being located here, including roles in finance and other administrative functions down the road.

"The progress that we've made in our business in the U.S. clearly drives demand for more people, services, technology to support that business," he said. "And then, there's some relocating jobs down here. So it's (been growth from) a combination of the two."

UBS manages $15 billion of assets for Tennessee clients among $1 trillion of assets for U.S. clients.

In addition to area residents, UBS' local business solutions center is starting to attract college graduates from across the Southeast now looking to move here instead of eyeing larger cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. McCann said.

"We'll be growing in Nashville — growing for foreseeable future," he added.

In one sign of Nashville's growing importance within UBS, the company brought its Revitalizing America series on job creation and the U.S. economy to town Thursday. McCann moderated a conversation with former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the private event that was expected to draw up to 300 UBS clients to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Reach Getahn Ward at 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @getahn.