UBS Financial Statements have been prepared in accordance
with International Financial Reporting Standards
(IFRS). Until 2006, UBS also reconciled its Financial Statements
to US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US
GAAP). It will now no longer do so after the SEC released a
final rule on 21 December 2007 under which financial
statements from foreign private issuers in the US will be accepted
without reconciliation to GAAP if they are prepared
in accordance with IFRS as issued by the International
Accounting
Standards Board. As a US listed company, we
had provided in the Annual Financial Statements until and
including 31 December 2006 a description of the significant
differences which would have arisen if our accounts
had been presented under US GAAP, a detailed reconciliation
of equity and net profit attributable to UBS shareholders
under IFRS to US GAAP, and additional disclosures
required
under US GAAP.
Except where clearly identified, all of UBS’s financial information
presented in this document is presented on a consolidated
basis under IFRS. Pages 121 to 142 contain the financial
statements for the UBS AG Parent Bank – the Swiss
company,
including branches worldwide, which owns all the
UBS companies, directly or indirectly. The Parent Bank’s financial
statements are prepared in order to meet Swiss regulatory
requirements and in compliance with Swiss Banking
Law. Except
in those pages, or where otherwise explicitly
stated, all references to “UBS” refer to the UBS Group and
not to the Parent Bank.
All references to 2007, 2006 and 2005 refer to the UBS
Group and the Parent Bank’s fiscal years ended 31 December
2007, 2006 and 2005. The Financial Statements for the UBS
Group and the Parent Bank have been audited by Ernst &
Young Ltd. An explanation of the critical accounting policies
applied in the preparation of our Financial Statements is provided
in the next section. The basis of our accounting is given
in Note 1 to the Financial Statements.
