UBS Group Moving to Santana Row

UBS Group has moved its ducats from an 18-story tower in Downtown San Jose to the western suburbs.

After 34 years, the Swiss-based investment bank has pulled up stakes from 50 West San Fernando Street and moved to offices at the Santana Row mall at 355 Santana Row, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

The Zurich-based financial services firm had occupied 12,600 square feet across the eighth floor at the building known as 50 West, owned by San Francisco-based Jay Paul Company, since 1989. In October 2020, it renewed its lease for two years, at $5.40 a square foot.

UBS moved its San Jose hub this week to a 9,000-square-foot office above Rosie McCann’s Irish Pub & Restaurant at Santana Row, five miles away. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The move comes six months after Switzerland’s biggest bank agreed to buy rival Credit Suisse for $3.3 billion. The deal was propelled by a near-collapse of Credit Suisse during a banking crisis that led to the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

UBS has been a major player in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, with locations in Los Gatos, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Mateo, Walnut Creek and San Francisco. This month, it helped finance Blue Owl Capital’s $192.5 million purchase of Western Digital’s campus in Milpitas.

Maryland-based Federal Realty Investment Trust, which owns Santana Row, has been expanding the mall’s offices since opening it in 2002. Last year, it completed One Santana West, a 375,000-square-foot office building just across from the mixed-use mall.

UBS will join such tenants as NetApp, Splunk, Satellite Healthcare and Newmark Group, according to the Business Times.

With the exit of UBS at 50 West, 17 tenants remain, including The Silicon Valley Capital Club, Wells Fargo and public radio station KQED, whose name tops the buildings, as well as the Silicon Valley Business Journal, unidentified Jay Paul employees said.

Jay Paul bought the 18-story, 357,000-square-foot tower in 2019 for $238 million.

— Dana Bartholomew