UBS Chairman-Designate Sees No Need For More State Aid - Report

Tom Burroughes

9 March 2009

Kaspar Villiger, chairman-designate of UBS, hopes that Switzerland’s largest bank and the world’s biggest wealth manager will not need a second government bailout package, the Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported yesterday.

"We hope very strongly that this will not be the case," Mr Villiger, a former Swiss finance minister, told the paper in an interview, when asked whether the bank would need more government help.

"The bank has done a lot to recover under (chairman) Peter Kurer and (former CEO) Marcel Rohner," Mr Villiger said.

UBS, struggling to rebuild its brand after investments in risky US assets forced it to make bigger write-downs than any other European bank, accepted SFr6 billion ($5.2 billion) government aid last year.

In addition, the Swiss National Bank set up a fund for troubled assets from UBS. In February, the central bank cut the original size of this fund by a third to just under $40 billion.

UBS announced Mr Villiger's nomination as chairman last Wednesday, completing a top-management clearout one week after the appointment of former Credit Suisse head Oswald Gruebel as its new chief executive. Peter Kurer, current UBS chairman, will not stand for re-election.

Mr Villiger told the newspaper UBS would continue to do business in the US despite an ongoing row with US tax authorities, putting Swiss banking secrecy in the spotlight.