UBS, hard hit by the banking crisis, has slashed its bonus pool for 2008 by over 80 per cent, according to an interview with a senior official by Bloomberg.

The pool for the bank’s employees excluding brokers in the US will be less than SFr2 billion (about $1.8 billion), compared with the SFr9.5 billion paid in 2007.

This comes after UBS had to take a $59.2 billion Swiss government aid package in October 2008.

Neither chief executive officer Marcel Rohner, his 11 colleagues on the executive board nor chairman Peter Kurer will receive any variable pay for 2008. The bank is also altering its compensation structure to let it claw back elements of remuneration from some staff after the award.

The bank has a contractual obligation to pay about SFr1.3 billion in variable compensation, according to a spokesman for the Swiss government at a press conference in Bern.