UBS pays $1.43bn to settle US mortgage claims

UBS said it had previously set aside reserves to cover the $1.43 billion payout © Keystone / Ennio Leanza

Swiss bank UBS has agreed to pay $1.435 billion (CHF1.25 billion) to settle US charges that it misled investors into buying troubled mortgage securities, concluding an industrywide probe into a root cause of the 2008 global financial crisis.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday said it had collected more than $36 billion in civil fines from 19 banks, mortgage originators and rating agencies over the packaging, sale and rating of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) leading up to the crisis.

Many of these securities carried triple-A ratings despite being backed by subprime and other risky mortgages, and investors suffered enormous losses as borrowers went into default and underwriting flaws became apparent.

The largest settlement, $16.65 billion, was reached in 2014 with Bank of America, which had bought mortgage specialist Countrywide Financial six years earlier.

‘Warning’

UBS’s settlement resolved DoJ claims in a 2018 lawsuit filed in Brooklyn that the bank had defrauded investors by knowingly making false and misleading statements about more than $41 billion in loans backing 40 RMBS issued in 2006 and 2007.

The bank had rejected a proposal that it pay nearly $2 billion to settle, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.

Credit Suisse, which UBS bought in June, reached a similar $5.28 billion settlement in 2017.

In a press release, UBS said it had previously set aside reserves to cover the $1.43 billion payout. Monday’s settlement should result in the lawsuit’s dismissal.

UBS’s payout is “a warning to other players in the financial markets who seek to unlawfully profit through fraud that we will hold them accountable no matter how long it takes,” US Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said in a statement.