UBS seems to be pulling out all the stops to repair its image and win new business, announcing a major new sponsorship deal with Formula 1 racing while simultaneously rolling out a new global advertising campaign.

UBS’s global sponsorship deal with Formula 1 will be formally launched at the Singtel Singapore Grand Prix, which will run between 24 and 26 September. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, however UBS has said that the deal was commercially attractive and compared favourably with other forms of building brand awareness and offering client hospitality.

In outlining the rationale behind its choice to sponsor Formula 1, UBS said that it is a year-round, highly visible, and popular sport with a strong presence in many of the bank’s key growth markets, such as Asia, Middle East and Latin America. In terms of brand awareness, the sport reaches a global television audience of some 520 million people, and in addition to this the sponsorship deal will generate excellent client hospitality opportunities, the bank said.

“UBS has been searching for a global sponsorship platform that has appeal to our clients, promotes our brand globally and makes good commercial sense. Our new partnership with one of the largest and most popular sporting organisations in the world will fulfil all these criteria, and it constitutes a key element of our newly-launched branding activities," Oswald Grübel, UBS’s chief executive, said in a statement.

UBS’s announcement of the Formula 1 sponsorship deal follows news that the bank is to roll out the US leg of its new global advertising campaign - encompassing television, print, digital media and billboards - in the fourth quarter. The campaign debuts in Switzerland and Asia Pacific this week, and will launch in the rest of Europe as well as Africa in early September.

At that time Dow Jones cited an internal UBS memo which said: "We have restored our earnings power and are excellently positioned to deliver on our strategy. At the same time, we know that it will take more time and even more effort on our part before we fully regain the trust of our clients.”

UBS has been looking to rebuild its image following massive losses related to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a high profile legal tussle with the US authorities over allegations the bank helped US clients evade their tax obligations. In the second quarter the bank reported that client outflows from the bank’s wealth management arm decelerated further to SFr5.2 billion (around $4.96 billion), compared with SFr8.0 billion in the previous three months.