Ethos calls for UBS chairman Ospel to go

The Swiss Foundation for Sustainable Investment, Ethos, wants a change of leadership at UBS, after huge writedowns at Switzerland's largest bank.

The director of the foundation, Dominique Biedermann, is calling for the bank’s chairman, Marcel Ospel, to step down at the annual shareholders’ meeting in April.

UBS has been hit more than any other European bank by the United States subprime mortgage crisis, so far having to write down $14.5 billion (SFr15.9 billion).

Biedermann told the Sonntag newspaper: “We hope the UBS board will present us with a proposal to choose someone other than Mr Ospel.”

UBS shareholders will be asked at an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting next month to approve a SFr13 billion capital injection by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and an unnamed Middle East investor.

The bank is preparing for what is likely to be a stormy meeting after facing attacks from a number of shareholders.

“GIC and the Arabic investor should only be able to subscribe to half of the planned capital increase. The rest should be planned as a normal capital increase for which there is a rights issue,” Biedermann told the newspaper.

Over the last 12 months, the UBS share price has lost more than 40 per cent in value.