When UBS and Record plc joined forces in 2021, the partnership looked like a natural fit: a global wealth management powerhouse lending its distribution muscle to a UK-listed currency management specialist branching into sustainable emerging market finance. That relationship has since cooled considerably, with UBS growing increasingly vocal about the risks lurking inside private market investments, precisely the area where Record has been placing its biggest bets.
The numbers behind the friction
Record plc’s fiscal year 2026 results, released in June, tell a story of growth and strain running in parallel. Assets under management climbed to $114.6 billion, a 14% year-over-year increase. But revenue moved in the opposite direction, falling 4% to £40.1 million as the company shifted the composition of its mandates.
The Record Emerging Market Sustainable Finance fund, the product that originally brought UBS and Record together, started with roughly $750 million in assets and eventually grew beyond $1 billion. But UBS’s institutional clients have grown warier about the broader private credit landscape, and that wariness appears to have bled into the relationship.
UBS has cautioned that private credit defaults could reach as high as 15% in adverse market scenarios. That kind of warning from one of the world’s largest wealth managers carries weight, especially when the firm issuing it was previously helping market your products to its client base.
