& meanwhile in Afghanistan, from the Telegraph;
Kabul Bank 'diverted £540 million to group of 12 in massive fraud'

Afghanistan's biggest private bank was a massive fraud scheme from its founding, with £540 million ($861 million) diverted to a clique of beneficiaries including the president's brother, a British-funded audit has found.

From the Guardian today
"HSBC is to pay a record $1.9bn (£1.2bn) to settle allegations it laundered money for drug cartels and broke sanctions in the US to allow terrorists to move money around the financial system.
The embarrassment for HSBC comes barely 24 hours after Standard Chartered paid £415m to US regulators, and as banks brace for a wave of fines for attempting to rig Libor following the £290m penalty slapped on Barclays in June."

You know if you or I stole a few hundred francs we would likely go to jail - if you are bank & manipulate billions then nobody is jailed

From the Guardian today

"
Three British men were arrested on Tuesday as part of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the manipulation of Libor.

The SFO and City of London police arrested three men aged 33, 41 and 47 after searching a house in Surrey and two properties in Essex.

The three were taken to a London police station to be interviewed "in connection with the investigation into the manipulation of Libor".

The SFO's investigation into Libor rigging was sparked by the £290m fine levied on Barclays in June, which led to the departures of the bank's chairman Marcus Agius, chief executive Bob Diamond and newly promoted chief operating officer Jerry del Missier.
"

Less than a 300m fine and yet they made more and lost others more during the process, but all they can arrest is 3 people.
Why am I not surprised.

I remember when I was young I thought that banks were respectable institutions that one could trust.

As already posted in EF & copied from the Guardian "Swiss bank UBS made corrupt payments to brokers in an "extensive and widespread" attempt to manipulate key benchmark interest rates which has cost the bank Sfr1.4bn (£944m) in fines from global regulators."

List of recent UBS failures from Blick


Februar 2009: Tax avoidance fine 711 Million CHF.

September 2009: Incorrect information about stock exchange launch Vonagefine 137'000 CHF.

Oktober 2009: Employees making forbidden transactions losses 13,6Millionen Franken

Januar 2011: No warning about losses in US mortgages fine 100'000Franken,

Mai 2011: Insider transactions re Municipal Bonds fine 146 Millionen Dollar.

Januar 2012: UBS Global Asset Management overvalued assets fine274'000 Dollar.

Juni 2012: Irish UBS-affiliatemoney laundering fine 79'000 Franken.

November 2012: transaction losses re Kweku Adoboli fine 44 MillionFranken.

December 2012 Libor manipulation fine 1.4 Billion CHF

UBS, a lovely company.

Nothing nasty, or pathetically corrupt about them.

I feel sorry for the poor hard working guys'n'girls who are going to pay for the incompetent wrong doings of a few selfish b(w)ankers, by loosing their jobs in January.

The UK is actually £85k and double if a joint account - per bank or group of banks if under the same ownership.

not to forget the 2 billion that Mr. Adoboli lost on the actual trade

Never rains but it pours.....

From the Guardian "Hong Kong financial authorities said on Thursday that they are investigating Swiss bank UBS over possible misconduct related to the Asian financial centre's benchmark interest rate, HIBOR"

They said that they were "tipped off" by regulatory authorities in other countries.

Quote from Guardian today below.
Another Swiss bank? Anybody know which one? Only circa $60M to pay; must be a minor criminal bank

"A Swiss bank says it has agreed to pay $57.8 million to settle a court case in which it was charged with conspiring to help American clients hide more than $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.
Wegelin & Co. said Thursday that under the plea deal accepted by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York City, the firm admits to violating American law by operating accounts for U.S. taxpayers between 2002 and 2010. "

Seems that Wegelin has decided to close after this debacle; they had already sold most of their assets to Raffeisen

US banks agreed today to pay $20Bn in settlement of claims related to the US mortgage debacle.
Never ending story....

Worldwide the banks make the Mafia look relatively benign??

Never ending story

From the Guardian today

"Rate swap scandal: mis-selling bill to top £1.5bn
The cost of compensating businesses for the mis-selling of complex derivative products is to double to more than £1.5bn across the UK's major banks. "

Who knew the UK banks were so bad that they must pay multi billions to compensate for their business practices.

Billions paid for rate swap scandal & for money laundering & for dodgy loan insurance & for Libor manipulation & for who knows what else.

From today's papers
"ECB told to double its manpower - Consultants says European Central Bank will need to hire around 2,000 bank supervision staff."

& we were worried about those poor unemployed bankers

Nobody seems to remember that so many Swiss pensions are tied up in UBS Investment Funds.
I think some of the Swiss people will be in for a shock in 20 years time and that goes for all the West.
The pension money just won't be there !

Funds are held separately from the bank, so are actually safer than cash held by UBS......

I last Thursday evening heard from a retired UBS (SBV) employee that the shares-value of UBS had dropped from 100% to less than 10% within less than 5 years, but that the value of the company now is between 50 and 70% of what it was 5 years ago. So that to purchase this company would be an excellent deal for any purchaser

Not really, it's worth a fraction of what it was worth before, it's no the business it was. It trades at about 25% of it's highest price in 2007.

I guess you would have been a buyer in Swiss Air when it had fallen 90%......

I prefer a local bank to cover local needs and whose assets are transparent as are its expenses real to daily life. The highest paid is in relation to its work and workers - the abs.ch so far measures up to these criteria. Good luck !

Right you may be, BUT I did NOT speak about anybody buying UBS shares but about somebody purchasing the company in full, then splitting and reorganising it. And by the "value of the company" I of course did NOT mean the shares-value but the actual value of the company which is far higher. Companies whose actual value is much higher than the shares value usual are targets of take-overs, because a purchaser (raider) will only pay a sum slightly higher than the shares value and then can work on making a big profit.

I in view of the overall situation advised some people I knew AGAINST buying Swissair shares, but had the management and the shareholders been ready to consider a partial sale, they would have found a buyer. EXACTLY because the actual value in spring 2001 was much higher than the shares value. The various subsidiaries would have had a market-value (if sold as companies) of together (accdg to the media) of more than 1000 millions (eine Milliarde = one billion) CHF.

While the bad state of UBS apparently was not seen in the banking industry until about 2008 (so I got told), the lousy state of Swissair was known in the industry for several years. Mr Bruggisser got appointed "Führer des Reichs" when the company already was ailing, to cure the mess.