Posts belonging to Category UBS



UBS to Eliminate More Jobs and Slash Bonuses

 

UBS will slash bonuses and eliminate more positions as a result of the now estimated $2.3 billion trading loss it has called “unauthorized,” according to observers. Apparently, the positions that resulted in the $2.3 billion loss were normal in size and appeared to be hedged, but the hedges were “fictitious positions.” As a result, there […]

Exchange Traded Funds Can Blow Up

 

The recent UBS “rogue trader” debacle illustrates that, while exchange traded funds based on major indices may be suitable investments for many investors, more extreme and exotic exchange traded funds often involve tremendous risk, and are therefore unsuitable for most investors.

Time Is Running Out On Credit Crisis Legal Claims

 

Many investors, both individuals and corporations, were misled by their brokers and harmed during the credit crisis. For various reasons, however, many such investors have not yet taken action to recover their losses. Some have delayed taking action in order to see whether the misconduct warranted legal action while others just put it off until […]

Rogue Trader Reportedly Costs UBS $2 Billion

 

A UBS exchange-traded-fund director has lost $2 billion of the firm’s money, raising questions about the bank’s proprietary trading and risk management systems just three years after it lost over $39 billion and had to be rescued by the Swiss National Bank.

UBS Announces Massive Job Cuts

 

UBS AG said it will lay off more than 5% of its employees, according to Neil Maclucas’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “UBS to Cut 3,500 Jobs.” Forty-five percent of the cuts will come from investment banking and thirty-five percent will come from the wealth-management and Swiss bank unit. The high proportion of cuts at […]

Reverse Convertible Securities More Likely to Become Toxic as Market Swoons

 

The current free fall in the stock market is likely to activated the ticking time bombs that are hidden away in some investors’ portfolios. These time bombs are embedded in a type of structured product called Reverse Convertible Notes or Reverse Exchangeable Notes. The problem has to do with the way these products are structured.

SEC Report Reveals Serious Abuses in the Sale of Structured Securities

 

On July 27, 2011, the Staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations published a report entitled “Staff Summary Report on Issues Identified in Examinations of Certain Structured Securities Products Sold to Retail Investors.” This report was based on the Staff’s review of eleven broker dealers that sell various structured […]

FINRA Warns Investors about Structured Products and Other Non-Conventional Securities

 

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has issued an investor alert warning against chasing yield with structured products, junk bonds and floating-rate bank-loan funds. The alert was prompted by “significant recent inflows” into high-yield products. Investors may find enhanced yields attractive in the current market environment of low yields on conventional fixed-income investments and higher […]

Georgia Securities Regulators Initiate Investigation of Reverse Convertible Securities

 

The Georgia Securities Commissioner has launched an investigation into sales of structured products called reverse convertible notes made by broker-dealer firms to Georgia residents. The brokerage firms under investigation include UBS AG, Morgan Stanley and Ameriprise Financial. The investigations were begun after the Commissioner received complaints from investors who lost money in these purportedly safe […]

JP Morgan Pays $228 Million to Resolve Bid-Rigging Charges

 

JP Morgan Chase will pay $228 million to settle SEC charges that it rigged nearly 100 transactions involving municipal-bond auctions, according to David Benoit’s and Jessica Holzer’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “J.P. Morgan Settles Bid-Rig Case.” There are concurrent settlement agreements with various states. The SEC has settled similar cases against Bank of America […]