Anyway, back to Switzerland and the Swiss banks. Things do appear to be stabilizing at UBS. Sergio Ermotti was appointed chief executive in late 2011 and a year later he installed the long-term Merrill Lynch banker Andrea Orcel as head of UBS’s investment bank. UBS underwent an epiphany and scaled its fixed-income division back drastically. The new focus was to be wealth management and corporate finance, which would hopefully flourish untainted by scandals in the fixed-income division. However, in the third quarter of 2013, UBS suffered a setback. The bank announced that it would delay, by at least a year, its aim to reach a 15% group return-on-equity target. This retreat was due to an unexpected demand from the Swiss regulator, Finma, requiring UBS to set aside more capital against "known and unknown litigation".
Abigail Hofman,
December 19, 2013