UBS reassures UK charity clients about their investments

Finance | Tania Mason | 16 Sep 2011

UBS has contacted all of its charity clients to offer reassurance that their invested funds are safe, following the arrest of a rogue trader who is estimated to have cost the Swiss banking giant £1.3bn.

Head of charities Andrew Wauchope confirmed to civilsociety.co.uk this morning that the bank was getting in touch with all of its charity clients to assure them that no client positions are affected by the loss.

However, he refused to comment further and the press office would say no more than what was contained in its official statement released yesterday. This read: “UBS has discovered a loss due to unauthorised trading by a trader in its Investment Bank.

“The matter is still being investigated, but UBS’s current estimate of the loss on the trades is in the range of USD 2 billion. It is possible that this could lead UBS to report a loss for the third quarter of 2011. No client positions were affected.”

UBS manages £1.05bn for 305 UK charities. Its largest charity client portfolio is in the range £50m-£100m while most portfolios (50 in total) fall into the £1m-£5m range.

In a letter to its 65,000 staff yesterday, the bank said: “We urge you to stay focused on your clients, who are counting on you to guide them through these uncertain times.”

Trader Kweku Adoboli, 31, who is understood to work in the European equities division, was detained in the early hours of Thursday and remains in custody.

BBC financial journalist Nigel Cassidy has warned that the reputation of UBS could be affected by the incident

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.