ZURICH (AFP) — The head of embattled Swiss bank UBS said on Thursday that the worst is now behind it after unprecedented turmoil which saw the bank lose 37 billion dollars in the US subprime crisis.
"I definitely think that the worst is behind us," UBS chief executive Marcel Rohner told Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
"There will certainly be plenty of things for banks to clear up over the next two years but as far as systemic risks are concerned, we've got over the hardest part," he said.
Rohner said that UBS's investment banking arm had "developed some questionable economic activities" in the run-up to the subprime crisis.
"We made the mistake of adopting an imitation strategy to try and catch up with our competitors in fixed income operations," he said.
UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, has had to write down over 37 billion dollars in bad investments since the subprime mortgage crisis in the US began, making it the worst-hit bank by the crisis so far.
Earlier this month, it posted first-quarter losses of 11.54 billion Swiss francs (7.1 billion euros).
The bank faces fresh problems after a former member of its private banking team was detained in the United States as part of a tax evasion probe.
The bank decided to shut down its cross-border private banking business for US customers last November, but recently, a former senior banker Bradley Birkenfeld was indicted.
Birkenfeld has been accused of helping wealthy Americans to evade paying income tax on their investments, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal published earlier this month.
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