Impact of the financial crisis (2008-2009)

The bank's losses continued to mount in 2008 when UBS announced in April 2008 that it was writing down a further $19 billion of investments in subprime and other mortgage assets. By this point, UBS's total losses in the mortgage market were in excess of $37 billion, the largest such losses of any of its peersIn response to its losses, UBS announced a 15 billion CHFto raise the additional funds need to shore up its depleted reserves of capital. UBS cut its dividend in order to protect its traditionally high  ratio, seen by investors as a key to its credibility as the world's largest wealth management company, who had been the architect of the merger that created UBS in 1998, also announced that he would step down as chairman of the bank to be replaced by  the bank’s general counsel.In October 2008, UBS announced they had placed CHF 6 billion of new capital, through mandatory convertible notes, with  The SNB (Swiss National Bank) and UBS made an agreement to transfer approximately USD 60 billion of currently illiquid securities and various assets from UBS to a separate fund entity In November 2008, UBS put $6 billion of equity into the new “bad bank” entity, keeping only an option to benefit if the value of its assets were to recover. Heralded as a “neat” package by the New York Times, the UBS structure guaranteed clarity for UBS investors by making an outright saleUBS announced, in February 2009, that it had lost nearly 20 billion CHF (US$17.2 billion) in 2008, the biggest single-year loss of any company in Swiss history. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007,UBS had written down approximately $50bn of mortgage related assets and announced 11,000 job cuts.