* Says staff turnover a normal symptom of fluid market
* Says business won't be influenced by temporary govt stake
(Adds quotes, background)
By Tova Cohen and Ari Rabinovitch
TEL AVIV, June 11 (Reuters) - UBS Investment Bank's management does not expect further cuts in staff after its parent company announced thousands of layoffs, Vice Chairman Lord Brittan of Spennithorne said on Thursday.
Brittan added that any staff turnover at UBS, which recently hiked the salaries of some investment bankers to guard against poaching by competitors, was normal for what he described as a "fluid market".
Parent company Swiss bank UBS AG reported in May a first-quarter loss of 2 billion Swiss francs ($1.9 billion) on yet more writedowns and client withdrawals and said it remained cautious as the global economy continued to deteriorate.
On April 15, UBS said it would cut staff by 11 percent, or to 67,500 in 2010 from 76,200 at the end of March. The reductions compare with a figure of about 77,500 employees globally at the end of 2008.
Asked on the sidelines of a meeting of the IOSCO securities regulation forum in Tel Aviv whether he saw further job losses at the investment bank, Brittan said: "No."
Asked whether he was concerned that it had lost talent, he told Reuters: "Bankers come and bankers go. That's always been the case. So, inevitably, it's a very fluid market, and we've taken on people and we've lost people, and that's quite normal."
Brittan said any staff turnover was not a result of the Swiss government stake in UBS.
Berne agreed last October to give the biggest Swiss bank a badly needed 6 billion Swiss franc cash injection in exchange for mandatory convertible notes that would give it a stake of 9.3 percent. "Everybody knows that the government stake ... is not going to last very long... So I don't believe that anybody who's thinking of either working for UBS or doing business with UBS in anything other than the very short term is going to be influenced by the government stake," Brittan said.
He said he did not know when the government might sell its stake in UBS.
The Swiss finance ministry said this week it was in talks over its investment in UBS with various parties but has not yet decided to convert its debt into shares or sell them.
Brittan also noted that while the company had cut back in many areas, it had not done so in Israel.
"We are very committed to the Israeli market," he said. (Editing by Will Waterman)