ubs ag

The Swiss bank UBS AG has uncovered cases of tax fraud by some of its U.S. clients, Chairman Peter Kurer said Thursday.

UBS examined its files as a result of investigations by the U.S.

Justice Department and others into cross-border services the bank provides to American clients, Kurer told shareholders.

'Our investigations have uncovered a limited number of cases of tax fraud under both U.S. and Swiss law,' he said.

He gave no further details.

The head of the Swiss Banking Commission said he did not rule out that UBS AG might need more government aid to survive the financial crisis, a daily newspaper reported Sunday.

An American customer of UBS AG will ask a Swiss court to stop his account details from being handed over to U.S. authorities probing alleged tax evasion, his lawyer said Monday.

A senior executive with Swiss banking giant UBS AG has been indicted on charges of conspiring to hide some $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

Former UBS AG Chief Executive Peter Wuffli has renounced 12 million Swiss francs ($10.2 million) in payments he was to receive under his contract when Switzerland's largest bank fired him as the subprime crisis began, the bank said Sunday.

UBS AG posted a net profit of 296 million Swiss francs ($252 million) for the third quarter Tuesday, its first after four consecutive quarterly losses, and predicted customers would continue withdrawing funds in the last three months of the year.

Switzerland followed the lead of other European countries and the United States on Thursday by announcing it would inject billions of dollars into its banking system, chiefly to the benefit of its largest bank UBS AG.

Swiss bank UBS AG will cut 2,000 jobs at its troubled investment banking unit, most of which will be lost in the U.S. and Britain, an official said.

UBS AG, one of the hardest hit banks in the subprime mortgage crisis, said Tuesday that it had further losses and writedowns of $5.1 billion during the second quarter of 2008.

UBS AG, Switzerland's largest bank, said Friday it expects its second-quarter results to be 'at or slightly below break-even' due to a tax credit that will at least partly offset investment losses.

It also said it won't need to ask for more capital when it reports the results next month.

Analysts had been expecting a second-quarter loss of as much as $4.9 billion from the bank that has been hammered by big losses related to the U.S. subprime lending crisis.