Is UBS cutting 5,000 management jobs?

Switzerland's biggest bank UBS plans to cut up to 5,000 senior and management jobs in the next few weeks, a media report said on Sunday.

The report said that according to its own research up to 2,500 management positions could go in UBS's dominant and profitable wealth management division, which accounts for 50,000 of the bank's total 77,000 staff.

A UBS spokesman declined to comment on the report. UBS said last week that it was restructuring its Swiss business structure into four regions from eight, and trimming its top management. But it said the changes did not mean any more job cuts than the 600 to 800 positions it already planned to cut in Switzerland as part of the thousands of job losses globally it had already announced.

UBS said in February that after a record loss it would cut 2,000 jobs to take staff to about 75,000 by the middle of this year.

UBS is struggling to rebuild its once powerful brand and focus on its core Swiss business after massive investments in risky US assets forced it to make more writedowns than any other European bank and accept government backing.

Agencies

Financial giant UBS officials refuse salary

As a number of American banks resist calls to rein in executive pay, the unthinkable is happening — at least in Switzerland, where three former officials of UBS, the troubled Swiss financial giant, said that they would forgo more than $27 million in compensation.

Marcel Ospel, the former chairman of the board at the Swiss bank, and Stephan Haeringer and Marco Suter, two former directors, said they would give up pay promised them after the bank reported nearly $50 billion in losses and received even more than that in financial support from the Swiss government.

“With the involvement of the Swiss government, I realized that decisive action was required on my part,” Ospel said in a statement. “I hope that my action will help to resolve a situation that was inconceivable to me until a short time ago,” he said.

Ospel will contribute more than twothirds of the total; the balance will be paid by Haeringer and Suter.

In response, UBS issued a very brief statement: “We welcome the decision.” As indeed UBS might. The former UBS executives had been the focus of intense public criticism after the bank reported stunning losses on devastating subprimerelated investments.

This month, the bank announced that its chairman, Peter Kurer; its chief executive, Marcel Rohner; and members of its executive board would also have a bonus-free 2008.

Source: NYT News Service