UBS suffers loss
06/05/2008
Announcing first-quarter losses of 11.5 billion Swiss francs ($10.9 billion) on, UBS said it planned to slash 5,500 jobs, or slightly less than 7.0% of its workforce, after taking $37 billion in investment write-downs. Around half of these would be made in its loss-making securities division and would come on top of the 1,500 job losses announced last year.
UBS also confirmed that it was planning to dump its municipal bond business, as reported by Forbes.com, and sell $20 billion worth of subprime assets to a new fund being created by U.S. asset manager BlackRock at a 25.0% discount.
However UBS shed 4.3%, or 1.60 Swiss francs ($1.52), to 35.28 Swiss francs ($33.65), on Tuesday morning trading in Zurich, as the plans fell short of the more fundamental restructuring that activist investors such as former UBS President Luqman Arnold had been calling for
