Ospel vows to remain at helm

UBS AG Chairman Marcel Ospel, urging shareholders to approve the bank's plan to replenish capital, said his duty is to stay "on the front lines" while the company seeks to return to profit.

"I fully understand, and we're likely to hear it often today, that you are extremely disappointed by what has happened," Ospel told some 6,500 investors in Basel, Switzerland.

"I would never thoughtlessly relinquish my responsibility, and I intend to ensure that UBS gets back on the road to success."

Some investors have called for Ospel's resignation, and the company has proposed to shorten his term to one year from three, after the bank posted the first annual loss since its creation, on $19 billion in writedowns tied to the collapse of the US subprime market.

"People are angry with UBS because they are losing a lot of money with their actions and management doesn't answer properly," Roby Tschopp, president of Swiss shareholder group Actares, said.

"The shareholders are being excluded from the capital improvement and there is no way that people can recover the money that is getting lost," he said.

Swiss President Pascal Couchepin said in an interview with business magazine Bilan that Ospel shouldn't keep his pay for the past years after the bank announced record losses.

Ospel, who was the force behind the merger that created Zurich-based UBS in 1998 and has been chairman for seven years, said last year's losses at the bank caused him "a lot of distress".

"Until recently we had the reputation of being a cautious, even risk-averse bank," Ospel, said. "We were therefore all the more disappointed that we had failed to recognize the signals from the US housing market in time."

Agencies

(China Daily 02/28/2008 page17)