Initiatives and achievements

UBS wins Financial Times "Grand Prix" award

In February, UBS was both the overall “Grand Prix” winner and financial industry leader in the Financial Times Best of European Business awards run by the newspaper and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, an international consultancy group.

UBS won because of the “breadth of its business, both geographically and in product terms.”

“Unlike many rivals, the group has exploited the complementary relationship between its divisions,” the newspaper wrote, with its growth strategy supported by a “meticulous” brand approach aimed at presenting UBS as one integrated firm.

Changes to Swiss pension fund

At the end of March, we announced a number of changes to our pension fund for employees in Switzerland. While the financial position of the pension fund is very solid, we wanted to ensure that it continues to provide our employees with competitive benefits in the long term. In the future, participants will be able to profit from good investment performance, but they will also acquire increased investment risk. Effective 2007, the changes will strengthen the financial benefits of the fund, without requiring higher contributions from participants. The changes will be financed by UBS, with CHF 100 million in additional annual payments, while the pension fund itself will make a one-time contribution from reserves of around CHF 760 million. In April, we also decided to provide our current retirees in Switzerland with a voluntary one-time additional monthly pension payment of an aggregate CHF 54 million.

Minor amendments to disclosure

Until now, we have reported adjusted regulatory capital and certain return ratios that use it as a base figure to help explain the returns our business groups generate. We will continue to follow the same practice but starting this quarter, we will rename the term allocated regulatory capital. The new term more accurately reflects the fact that capital is actually allocated to the business groups based on risk-weighted assets and goodwill.

In addition, in our US wealth management business, starting this quarter, the calculation of revenues includes net goodwill funding as acquisition costs are no longer disclosed separately when discussing results. Prior periods are shown on the same basis in tables and text.

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