Tidjane Thiam, who used to head insurance giant Prudential, was awarded 12 million Swiss francs in total pay in 2016.
Credit Suisse’s chief executive said the decision to reduce top executives’ variable compensation reflects “the total confidence” they have in fixing the Swiss bank’s fortunes.
In a letter to shareholders, he wrote: “My highest priority is to see through the turnaround of Credit Suisse which is under way.
“I hope that this decision will alleviate some of the concerns expressed by some shareholders and will allow the executive team to continue to focus on the task at hand.”
Credit Suisse investors are set to meet on April 28. Under Swiss law they get a binding annual vote on executive pay.
Swiss bank HSBC has decided to close its private banking unit in India, where the increasing number of wealthy individuals has led to intense competition for their business.
Clients will be given the choice to move to HSBC’s retail unit.
The future of the wealth management unit’s 70 staff will be decided early next year, when it is due to close.
The move follows the lead of RBS and Morgan Stanley, which have sold their onshore private operations in Asia’s third-largest economy.
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Despite the growth in the number of multi-millionaires and a fast-growing wealth management market in India, it has been hard for foreign banks to attract business.
Indian companies can appeal to investors in small as well as large cities. They are not weighed down by high costs and international regulatory restrictions.
In June, HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver announced the bank was going to cut thousands of jobs from its global workforce as part of his restructuring program.
Since taking over his role in 2011, Stuart Gulliver has sold scores of businesses and taken on more compliance staff to deal with the increased regulatory oversight of the industry.
An HSBC spokesperson in India said: “This marks further progress in the HSBC group strategy to simplify business and deliver sustainable growth.”
HSBC employs about 32,000 people in India, where it offers corporate, retail and investment banking services.
Former HSBC employee Herve Falciani has been convicted of economic espionage and sentenced to five years in jail in absentia, a Swiss court has ruled.
Herve Falciani was on trial for leaking bank data that led to tax evasion probes worldwide against prominent clients with accounts in Switzerland.
He did not attend the trial and because France does not extradite its own citizens, it is unlikely he will serve the sentence.
Herve Falciani told AP news agency he had “no reaction” to the sentencing.
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He had refused to travel from France to appear before the Swiss Federal Tribunal in Bellinzona for a trial that began last month.
Herve Falciani was charged with illegally obtaining data, economic espionage, breach of business confidentiality and breach of bank secrecy while working at a Swiss HSBC subsidiary between 2006 and 2008.
The court rejected all the charges except for one alleging a violation of economic intelligence, for having made public information about foreign entities in Lebanon, France, Germany, and the UK.
HSBC, which argued that Herve Falciani had illegally downloaded details from clients and accounts, welcomed the decision against its former employee, who was an IT worker at HSBC Private Bank (Suisse).
“HSBC has always maintained that Falciani systematically stole clients’ information in order to sell it for his own personal financial gain,” the bank said in a statement.
Kweku Adoboli said the ban marked the end of a difficult chapter in his life.
“I fully recognize the reasons for my prohibition and thank the FCA for their restraint. My hope now is to move forward in a positive way to help others learn from the mistakes I’ve made,” he said.
Kweku Adoboli’s lawyer said he wanted to repay his debt to society by using his own experience to explain how risk management controls might be avoided.
After serving almost half of his sentence for two counts of fraud, Kweku Adoboli was released from jail in June 2015.
During his trial at Southwark Crown Court, Kweku Adoboli told the jury that UBS staff were encouraged to take risks until they got “a slap on the back of the wrist” by senior managers.
Tracey McDermott of the FCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Authority, said in 2012 that the bank’s faulty controls had allowed Kweku Adoboli’s losses to mount to what was the largest trading loss in the UK.
“UBS’s systems and controls were seriously defective,” she said.
“As a result, Adoboli, a relatively junior trader, was allowed to take vast and risky market positions, and UBS failed to manage the risks around that properly.”
He is facing deportation to his native Ghana after an immigration tribunal this week ruled that he should be removed from the UK.
According to the UK’s law, foreign nationals who have been sentenced to more than a year in jail should be considered for deportation.
Kweku Adoboli, the son of a UN diplomat who was educated at a Yorkshire boarding school, said he would appeal against the “heartbreaking” decision.
Swiss banks have reported suspicions of money laundering by soccer’s governing body FIFA.
Local prosecutors are investigating 53 cases of possible money laundering in their inquiry into bidding for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups.
Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber said the incidents had been reported by Swiss banks.
He said his office was analyzing a “huge amount” of seized FIFA data in its inquiry.
The Swiss investigation is running in parallel to one being carried out by the US.
The 2018 and 2022 World Cups were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively. But leading FIFA official Domenico Scala has said the awards could be cancelled if evidence emerges of bribery.
Russia and Qatar deny any wrongdoing.
FIFA is facing claims of widespread corruption after Swiss police raided a hotel in Zurich – where the soccer’s governing body is based – and arrested seven of its top executives last month.
The seven were held at the request of the US DoJ which has charged 14 current and former FIFA officials and associates on charges of “rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted” corruption.
The charges follow a three-year inquiry by the FBI.
Also in May, Swiss prosecutors opened separate criminal proceedings “against persons unknown on suspicion of criminal mismanagement and of money laundering” in connection with the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
However, until now, much less has been revealed about the Swiss investigation than the inquiry being led by the FBI.
Michael Lauber told a news conference that the investigation was “huge and complex on many levels” and would take a long time.
“We note positively that banks in Switzerland did fulfill their duties to file suspicious activity reports. Partly in addition to 104 banking relations already known to the authorities, banks announced 53 suspicious banking relations via the anti-money-laundering framework of Switzerland,” he said.
Michael Lauber said he did not rule out interviews with FIFA president Sepp Blatter as part of his investigation.
Sepp Blatter has denied any wrongdoing and announced earlier this month that he will resign.
The attorney said his investigation was separate from that being carried out by the FBI and that documents and data would not be shared automatically with the US.
Michael Lauber added: “The world of football needs to be patient. By its nature, this investigation will take more than the legendary 90 minutes.”
Swiss bank UBS has reached an agreement with US housing agencies to settle claims it had mis-sold mortgage investments.
UBS said it had reached an agreement in principle with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) over the investments sold between 2004 and 2007.
In its statement, UBS also said it expected its second-quarter net profits for shareholders to total 690 million Swiss francs ($734 million).
UBS set aside a total of 865 million francs in the quarter to cover litigation.
Of that, 100 million francs is related to a deal with the UK authorities to disclose the account details of British tax evaders and hand back unpaid taxes.
The bank said that its wealth management business continued to see large inflows – totalling 10.1bn francs during the three-month period, the highest in six years.
Its US private banking business received an additional 2.7 billion francs of new client money, although 2 billion francs was withdrawn by clients from its asset management unit.
The influx of money comes despite the entire Swiss banking sector coming under scrutiny from foreign tax authorities and its own regulators.
UBS is currently under investigation from French and German authorities over allegations that it enabled tax evasion.
UBS reached an agreement in principle with the FHFA over the investments sold between 2004 and 2007
UBS’s board is refocusing the bank on serving wealthy clients, slimming down its investment banking and trading operations and cutting 10,000 jobs in the process.
The decision to make the investment bank subservient to its private banking business came after a string of scandals, including heavy losses on US mortgages during the financial crisis, losses incurred by the rogue London trader Kweku Adoboli, and UBS involvement in Libor-rigging.
The deal with the FHFA relates to residential mortgage-backed securities sold during the past decade’s US property bubble to federal housing agencies.
The underlying mortgages behind the investments later went bad, with many borrowers proving unable to repay their loans.
UBS is one of 18 international financial firms accused by the FHFA of mis-representing the mortgages as being better quality than they really were.
The FHFA is also representing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which had to be rescued by the US government during the 2008 financial crisis.
The settlement comes after UBS and 13 other banks failed to have an appeals court intervene in the case, following what the banks claimed were “gravely prejudicial” rulings against them.
The bank’s estimated earnings were better than the 550 million – 575 million Swiss francs that analysts had been expecting, and up from 425 million francs during the same period a year ago.
Its share price rose more than 3% in early trading on Monday following the announcement.
UBS will announce its official results for the second quarter of the year on July 30.
The head of the European Commission has told the European Parliament he wants EU-wide exchange of income data as part of the fight against tax evasion.
Jose Manuel Barroso said he would urge Wednesday’s summit of EU leaders to support automatic exchange of people’s earnings data between tax authorities.
Tax evasion costs EU states 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year, more than was spent on healthcare in 2008.
MEPs are expected to call for a Europe-wide blacklist of tax havens.
Pressure is likely to be put on Switzerland to relax banking secrecy amid anger over revelations about Greek and French politicians holding secret Swiss bank accounts.
The debate comes a day after UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged British overseas territories which operate low-tax regimes to “get their house in order” and sign up to international treaties on tax.
Jose Manuel Barroso said he wanted to see the principle of automatic exchange “become the standard at international level as well”.
The US Senate is currently scrutinizing the low global tax payments of Apple Inc and its subsidiaries in the Republic of Ireland in particular.
The main subsidiary, a holding company that includes Apple’s retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate income tax in the last five years, a Senate memorandum says.
In his speech to the parliament, Jose Manuel Barroso asked: “How can we explain to honest households and businesses who are feeling the squeeze yet still paying their fair share of taxes, that there are other parts of society and enterprise who are deliberately avoiding paying up?”
Jose Manuel Barroso said he would urge Wednesday’s summit of EU leaders to support automatic exchange of people’s earnings data between tax authorities
A trillion euros was, he said, “a huge amount of money to simply let through the net”.
He said he would make a call at Wednesday’s summit of EU leaders for the EU to adopt automatic exchange of income information on 1 January 2015.
EU tax authorities, he pointed out, already automatically exchanged information for income such as employment, pensions and insurance but he was proposing to include “all relevant types of income, such as dividends and capital gains”.
Austria, which has a strong tradition of banking secrecy, would support EU efforts to exchange information on foreign depositors, Chancellor Werner Faymann was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency on Tuesday.
“We won’t be the ones who put on the brakes and block things, and not the ones whose concerns put up blockades,” he said.
He noted that 1 trillion euros was “pretty much exactly the EU budget for the next seven years”.
Europe’s cash-strapped governments cannot afford to lose a single cent in tax revenue, let alone 1 trillion euros a year.
At Tuesday’s debate, non-EU member Switzerland is expected to come under pressure to put in place new rules.
Even top Swiss bankers now admit time is running out for its trademark banking secrecy.
Last week EU finance ministers agreed to start talks with Switzerland, along with Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino, on swapping bank account information.
Attempts to tighten up on tax evasion follow a furor in Greece over the so-called Lagarde list, containing the names of more than 2,000 Greeks including senior politicians with Swiss bank accounts.
More recently, France’s Socialist government was hit by a scandal, as former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac was forced to resign over tax fraud allegations.
He later admitted that he had hidden about 600,000 euros in a Swiss bank account.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined UBS $47.6 million for failings that led to trader Kweku Adoboli losing $2.2 billion.
The fine, the third largest imposed by the FSA, was for “system and control failings” that allowed Kweku Adoboli to trade in London well beyond authorized limits.
Kweku Adoboli was last week convicted of two counts of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison.
UBS said it was “pleased that the chapter has been concluded”.
The FSA, which conducted the investigation into failings at the bank with its Swiss counterpart, Finma, said there were serious weaknesses at the Swiss bank.
It said in a statement: “UBS failed to take reasonable care to organize and control its affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems, and failed to conduct its business from the London Branch with due skill, care and diligence.”
The FSA’s director of enforcement and financial crime, Tracey McDermott, said faulty controls had allowed the losses to mount to what was the largest trading loss in the country.
“UBS’s systems and controls were seriously defective,” she said.
“As a result, Adoboli, a relatively junior trader, was allowed to take vast and risky market positions, and UBS failed to manage the risks around that properly.”
Kweku Adoboli, the 32-year-old Ghana-born son of a diplomat, joined UBS in 2003, becoming a trader in 2006.
He worked in UBS’s global synthetic equities division (GSE), buying and selling exchange traded funds (ETFs), which track stocks, bonds and commodities.
He was arrested in September last year.
The Financial Services Authority has fined UBS $47.6 million for failings that led to trader Kweku Adoboli losing $2.2 billion
Southwark Crown Court was told that he was “a gamble or two away from destroying Switzerland’s largest bank”.
The judge said there was “a strong streak of the gambler” in him.
But, during evidence, Kweku Adoboli said everything he had done was aimed at benefiting the bank, where he viewed his colleagues as “family”.
He said he had “lost control in the maelstrom of the financial crisis”, but had been doing well until he changed from a conservative “bearish” position to an aggressive “bullish” stance under pressure from senior managers.
Kweku Adoboli told the jury that staff were encouraged to take risks until they got “a slap on the back of the wrist”.
The fine was set at 15% of the revenue of the division where Kweku Adoboli worked and takes account of the revenue generated by the business area where the weak controls occurred.
UBS said it had made a number of substantial changes since discovering the losses, including fixing the weakness in its financial reporting.
The bank added it was retraining staff on the importance of risk management and had changed the way it evaluated and compensated employees.
UBS is changing its own structure to make itself a simpler organization.
The bank’s chief executive, Oswald Gruebel, left the company in the aftermath of the scandal.
His successor, Sergio Ermotti, announced a major restructuring last month to run down the large, risky parts of the investment banking division.
UBS said it had fully co-operated with the regulators’ investigations and that it accepted their findings and the penalties incurred.
UBS’s fine was discounted from the original level of $65 million for early settlement.
Switzerland’s financial regulator Finma said in a statement that it would also check whether UBS had adequate capital backing for its operational risks.
Finma said it had identified “serious deficiencies in risk management controls” and that it would appoint a third party to make sure proper measures were introduced.
UBS has been banned by regulators from making new acquisitions and it also needs to get prior approval from Finma for any new business initiatives.
Kweku Adoboli, the City trader who lost $2.2 billion of Swiss bank UBS’s money, has been found guilty of two counts of fraud.
Kweku Adoboli, 32, of Whitechapel, east London, denied four charges of false accounting and two of fraud between October 2008 and September 2011.
The prosecution told Southwark Crown Court he was “a gamble or two away from destroying Switzerland’s largest bank”.
Kweku Adoboli, who was cleared of four charges of false accounting, was jailed for seven years.
Kweku Adoboli, who was arrested on 15 September 2011, worked in UBS’s global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds (ETFs), which track stocks, bonds and commodities.
He had joined the bank as a junior trader in 2006.
The court was told KwekuAdoboli lost $2.2 billion of the bank’s money in “unprotected, unhedged, incautious and reckless” trades.
But Kweku Adoboli, the Ghana-born son of a diplomat, told the jury his senior managers were aware of his actions and encouraged him to take risks.
He claimed he lost control over his trades during a period of market turbulence last year.
The court heard that at one point he stood to lose the bank $12 billion.
Kweku Adoboli was convicted of one count of fraud earlier on Tuesday.
The judge, Justice Keith, gave the jury a majority verdict direction, saying they could deliver a 9-1 verdict on the second fraud charge and the four false accounting charges.
Kweku Adoboli, the City trader who lost $2.2 billion of Swiss bank UBS’s money, has been found guilty of two counts of fraud
The jury had been reduced to five men and five women after two jurors were discharged.
Kweku Adoboli was found guilty by a majority verdict of the second fraud charge but acquitted of the four outstanding false accounting charges.
The prosecution said Kweku Adoboli had been a gambler who believed he had the “magic touch”.
But, giving evidence, Kweku Adoboli said everything he had done was aimed at benefiting the bank, where he viewed his colleagues as “family”.
Kweku Adoboli said he had “lost control in the maelstrom of the financial crisis”, and was doing well until he changed from a conservative “bearish” position to an aggressive “bullish” stance under pressure from senior managers.
He told the jury that staff was encouraged to take risks until they got “a slap on the back of the wrist”.
After the verdicts, Detective Chief Inspector Perry Stokes, from the City of London Police, which investigated Kweku Adoboli, said: “This was the UK’s biggest fraud, committed by one of the most sophisticated fraudsters the City of London Police has ever come across.
“To all those around him, Kweku Adoboli appeared to be a man on the make whose career prospects and future earnings were taking off. He worked hard, looked the part and seemingly had an answer for everything.
“But behind this facade lay a trader who was running completely out of control and exposing UBS to huge financial risks on a daily basis.
“Rules put in place to protect the bank’s position and the integrity of the markets were being bypassed and broken by a young man who wanted it all and was not willing to wait.
“When Adoboli’s pyramid of fictitious trades, exceeded trading limits and non-existent hedging came crashing down, the repercussions were felt in financial centres around the world.
“Now, just a year on, he is facing the reality that he was not above the law and will be made to pay for his crimes. Others who tread a similar path to his can expect the same fate.”
Greek journalist Costas Vaxevanis has been acquitted of breaching privacy for publishing the names of 2,000 suspected tax evaders.
Costas Vaxevanis published a list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, including a government minister and other prominent figures in public life.
Lawyers for Costas Vaxevanis, 46, argued that the charges were outrageous and said no-one on the list had actually complained of a breach of privacy.
After a one-day trial, a court in Athens found Costas Vaxevanis innocent.
He published the list in Hot Doc, the weekly magazine that he edits.
Greece is being urged by international lenders to crack down on tax evasion as part of far-reaching reforms demanded in exchange for billions of euros of bailout money.
Greek journalist Costas Vaxevanis has been acquitted of breaching privacy for publishing the names of 2,000 suspected tax evaders
The list of suspected evaders was reportedly leaked by an employee at the HSBC bank and passed to IMF chief Christine Lagarde when she was French finance minister in 2010.
Christine Lagarde apparently handed the list to the Greek authorities, but they took no action.
Two of Greece’s former finance ministers have acknowledged seeing copies of the list.
However, Yannis Stournaras, who took office in June, has told parliament he has not seen it.
Costas Vaxevanis said he had published the list because it was his job as a journalist to reveal the truth.
“The three last governments have lied and have made a mockery of the Greek people with this list,” he said.
“They were obliged to pass it to parliament or to the justice system. They didn’t do it, and they should be in prison for it.”
Prosecutors had accused him of publicly ridiculing people and delivering them “to a society that is thirsty for blood”.
“The solution to the problems that the country is facing is not cannibalism,” the prosecutor said.
But the court took little time in acquitting the journalist, and observers in the courtroom broke out in applause, according to the AFP news agency.
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