UBS chief stands firm as rogue trading losses rise to $2.3bn

Oswald Gruebel, the boss of UBS, yesterday claimed that he had the full backing of the board after the latest episode of rogue trading that has laid the Swiss giant low and raised questions about the future of its bedevilled investment bank.

It came as UBS yesterday raised its estimated losses due to alleged unauthorised trading by trader Kweku Adoboli to $2.3 billion (£1.5bn) from an initial $2bn. “I’m responsible for everything that happens at the bank,” Gruebel has told a Swiss newspaper. “If you ask me whether I feel guilty, then I would say no.”

Pressed yesterday if he had the board’s backing as he arrived in Singapore for meetings with UBS’s other directors and senior management, Gruebel replied: “Yes. Always.”

He was expected to ask the board to back plans for an overhaul of investment banking under his leadership – a plan sources said would be accelerated after the trading scandal.

London-based UBS trader Adoboli was charged on Friday with fraud and false accounting dating back to 2008 relating to the losses.

Also speaking outside UBS’s Singapore offices yesterday, UBS chairman Kaspar Villiger signalled he was not panicking about the scandal.

Villiger said there was solid backing from the bank’s shareholders. That came the day after the bank’s largest shareholder, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, issued a rare public reprimand over the rogue trading incident.

The sovereign wealth fund met the bank’s senior management on Tuesday, saying later that it had “expressed disappointment and concern at the lapses and urged UBS to take firm action to restore confidence in the bank”.

UBS said Adoboli concealed unauthorised speculative trading in equity index futures over the past three months by creating fake hedging positions in internal systems.