Initiatives and achievements

New board appointments

Shareholders at the 2005 Annual General Meeting (AGM) elected Marco Suter, formerly Group Chief Credit Officer, to the Board of Directors, replacing Alberto Togni, who retired on reaching the statutory age limit. Marco Suter has been appointed an Executive Vice Chairman with specific responsibility for overseeing risk policy and controls. Shareholders also elected Peter R.Voser, Chief Financial Officer of The Royal Dutch / Shell Group of Companies as a Non-Executive Director.

IT infrastructure makes a further step

At the beginning of this year, the Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) unit made a further step towards consolidating our IT infrastructure across UBS by integrating services mainly provided by Perot Systems to the Investment Bank.

In total, the transfer of services and personnel has resulted in roughly CHF 340 million in direct expenses being shifted to the Corporate Functions unit, and then charged back as indirect expenses to the Investment Bank.

Awareness of UBS brand rises significantly worldwide

The sustained effort and investment we are making to build our brand continues to pay off. The latest research results from our global “You & Us” advertising campaign show that awareness of and familiarity with UBS are growing in all regions worldwide.

In the US, for example, awareness of our brand continues to rise steadily among both business executives and target consumers. Significantly, familiarity rates among business executives rose sharply, to 73% of those surveyed in January 2005, up from 59% in May 2003, just before we combined our brands. Among affluent and high net worth consumers, awareness rose to 63% in January from 54% in 2003.

Europe was another area where we saw positive trends, with brand awareness among target consumers at 71% of those surveyed in January 2005, rising from 58% in May 2003.

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