UBS boss quits over rogue trader business

Time to go

So I was wrong in thinking Herr Gruebel would stick it out. He's actually decided to go, albeit a bit after the event. According to the bank he "feels that it is his duty to assume responsibility for the recent unauthorised trading incident". That's quite honest and decent, but the ones left in charge should see to it that never again such a toxic mixture of greed and adrenalin is allowed to course through the veins of young traders. Oh, and a belief that somehow gambling is the same as risk taking. That canard should be nailed squarely to prevent other incidents happening.

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UBS now puts loss at $2.3 billion

See no evil hear no evil - that's my motto!

I can't understand how bosses stay in place even when catastrophe is all around them. It never occurs to them to ask pertinent questions. In fact most never ask anything it seems so that if anything untoward hits the office fans they can say they knew nowt. The latest dimwitted boss is Oswald Gruebel who told a Swiss newspaper he would not resign as chief of UBS bank over the rogue trading business. "I'm responsible for everything that happens at the bank," Mr Gruebel told Swiss Sunday newspaper, der Sonntag. "If you ask me whether I feel guilty, then I would say no." Of course he doesn't feel guilty. He knows nothing so he can't feel guilty can he?

This is the bank that hired the services of Maureen Miskovic as chief risk officer. She had previously been at Lehman Brothers, which of course went down the tubes spectacularly. Ms Miskovic took over risk assessing at UBS at the start of the year. She arrived from US based financial services group State Street with a strong reputation and had been seen to shake up risk management at the bank. But she was unaware of this disaster until Kweku Adoboli owned up.

I think the problem is that we're dealing with two totally different types of people. On the one hand there is the group in which Gruebel and Miskovic thrive and then there's the techy wiz kiddy group that gets an adrenalin type rush at the thought of gambling with vast sums of cash. I couldn't do it. I find it hard enough not to press the wrong buttons when ordering train tickets online. I can hardly imagine what Adoboli was thinking when his loss hit the $2 billion mark.

But it must be a bit similar to gamblers in Las Vegas. Don't losers always think that another roll of the dice will bring them fortune? What's so different about the two forms of gambling? We should have a Rogue Traders Anonymous and a Blinkered Bank Bosses Anonymous.

UBS say the losses only related to trading positions taken on in the last three months. However, the police say it's three years. Will a court case give us the real truth of what went on? We've got a whole load of nonsense surrounding News Corporation. Will UBS be any better?

Going back to Herr Gruebel. He should hang his head in shame. His responsibilities amount to nothing, it would appear. For starters he's got a crap risk assessment system on his hands. It's a total disgrace for a chief executive to be so detached from reality.

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UBS bank trader remanded in custody

Kewku Adoboli in Facebook pose now facing the book in court

The powers-that-be have acted swifty in locking up the so-called rogue trader Kweku Adoboli. He's been accused of breach of trust and false accounting. As if the banks are themselves not in a big way involved in breach of trust with the British public. As for false accounting, I'd say that was a hard one to prove. But try to prove it they will.

These traders never seem to benefit themselves apart from becoming famous. Perhaps we should have a Big Brother session for rogue traders? But as with Jerome Kerviel of Societe Generale and Nick Leeson of Barings fame, the hapless Adoboli was a back room boy also operating front of house. UBS obviously learnt nothing from previous shinanigans.

It was said of Kerviel that he had a motive in proving that Anglo-Saxon banking methods had little place in the Gallic world of France. In Nick Leeson's case he seemed to want to prove that a boy from a humble background could outsmart the Baring toffs. Whatever the motives, someone needs to sort out these computerised money changers before they wreck the world.

And I notice that UBS has been having a hard time at the hands of the IRS in America. Having been in cahoots with tax evaders for a long time Uncle Sam got to the end of his tether and the bank had to do a deal in handing over the details of tax cheats who were preferring to put their money in cuckoo clocks rather than tax coffers in Washington. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman is after the unpatriotic dodgers. 12,000 of them came clean in a tax amnesty. "Americans now understand that if they try to hide assets overseas, the chances of being caught continue to increase." It's a start. After all, we're in this together, aren't we?

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