UBS Job Cuts Materialise As Expected, Yacht-Mongering Tax Evader Gets Nabbed

UBS further cements its position as the world’s most godawfully screwed bank today, with announcements today of another 7,500 job cuts, bringing their total to 18,000 since the start of the banking crisis. Swiss newspaper Sonntag actually broke this news more or less accurately two weeks ago, but here it is on official UBS headed paper.

2,500 are to go in Switzerland, and a fair proportion of them in America too – it’s hoped that the culls at UBS in the City last year will mean that London shouldn’t see too many more. The news dragged down their share price a massive 8.7% this morning, along with other financial stocks that had previously been buoyed with the news that Goldman Sachs is all ready to pay off its TARP money.

The other ongoing UBS story is their harbouring of US tax evaders, and how the American taxman doesn’t like it. We saw last week that Steven Rubenstein became the first American to get arrested for evading taxes through the bank; now Robert Moran, who owns a luxury yacht company, joins him. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was released on $6m bail; he now faces three years in the slammer and a $250,000 fine. The New York Times is right to highlight the ridiculousness of the boats he sells – they’ve sometimes got helipads, always cost millions, and have such hedge fund manager-pleasing names like “We Won”, “Sabbatical”, “Salute”, “Romance”, “Battered Bull”, “Galactica”, “Project Apostrophe”, and, rather aptly given the greed of its manager, “Never Enough”. “Amnesia” is presumably named for the condition you hope you’ll succumb to after you pay the bills for it; it may cost $345,000 euros a week to hire, but you do at least get an “inflatable workout sphere” included.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | April 15, 2009 1:13PM |