UBS Chairman To Step Down
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UBS AG, battered by the biggest writedowns from the collapse of the American subprime mortgage market, reported a $11.9 billion first-quarter loss and said the chairman, Marcel Ospel, will step down.
UBS rose the most in two weeks in Swiss trading after announcing plans yesterday to seek 15 billion francs in a rights offer to replenish capital, on top of 13 billion francs already raised from investors in Singapore and the Middle East. Zurich-based UBS will write down $19 billion on debt securities, bringing the total to almost $38 billion since the third quarter of 2007.
“Behind closed doors they have been cleaning up very swiftly and the capital increase will put them back onto a solid foundation,” the chief investment officer for European stocks at Allianz Global Investors in Frankfurt, Joerg de Vries-Hippen, said. Still, “it will take years to repair the bank’s reputation,” he said.
