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SWISS banking giant UBS has slashed its chairman's pay by 90 per cent, after it turned in its biggest-ever full-year loss earlier this year.
But it remains bullish about the Asia-Pacific market and said it has no intentions to cut jobs in Singapore, contrary to recent speculation in the media.
Bloomberg News reported yesterday that the Zurich-based bank had cut chairman Marcel Ospel's pay by 90 per cent.
Mr Ospel, 58, earned 2.57 million Swiss francs (S$3.6 million) last year, according to UBS' online annual report.
He reportedly turned down a bonus last year and has come under pressure from investors, after the bank made close to US$19 billion (S$26.3 million) in write-downs linked to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States. The full-year net loss was about 4.4 billion Swiss francs.
UBS, which expects another difficult year ahead, had earlier proposed shortening the next term for Mr Ospel and other board members to one year from three.
The bank's shares slumped to their lowest in almost 10 years on Monday amid concerns that it might have to make further write-downs and slash jobs at its offices around the world.
But UBS Asia-Pacific chairman and chief executive Rory Tapner yesterday said that the bank had experienced solid growth in the region in the last four years and had no plans to slow its investment.
Speaking at a press conference via video-conference from Hong Kong, he said that the bank's Asia-Pacific operations had performed extremely well, having posted record profits last year.
'Our wealth management business alone has doubled in size since 2005 in terms of assets under management, and UBS was the top-earning investment bank in the Asia-Pacific as at the end of last year,' he said.
'We decided four years ago to raise the Asia-Pacific's contribution to total business from 8 per cent to 15 per cent within three years.
'We exceeded this and last year, the revenue numbers from this region moved up to 20 per cent of all sustainable business for the group.'
When asked if the rumoured job cuts would apply to UBS' Asia-Pacific operations, Mr Tapner was emphatic.
'Our business here is growing and we do not see any reason to do dramatic things with the headcount.
'We are not going to suddenly kick people out because there is a cyclical slowdown.
'If there is something that is not doing well systemically, then we will not keep it going. But we are not seeing a sustained drop in activity here and we're not going to cut people like that because we will probably have to re-hire them again at higher salaries when the business returns,' he said laughing.
'I am really delighted at how things have been going here and the way staff have been keeping their heads up and the business going,' he added.
He declined to comment on the possibility of more writedowns for UBS but confirmed that investments into Singapore, as well as countries such as China, India and Japan, are likely to continue.
In December, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp invested $14 billion in UBS.
nicholas@sph.com.sg
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