In its annual report released yesterday the bank said following the disclosure of the ‘US matter’ a number of countries had requested information from it and other Swiss financial institutions relating to the cross-border wealth management services they provide.
In particular, UBS said the revenue services of the UK, Canada and Australia had ‘served requests upon, or made enquiries of, UBS and other Swiss and non-Swiss financial institutions’.
The bank said it is cooperating with these requests ‘strictly within the limits of financial privacy obligations under Swiss and other applicable laws’ and that it is premature to speculate on the outcome of any such enquiries.
Last week UBS urged Swiss lawmakers to approve a treaty between the US and Switzerland aimed at ending its long-running dispute with US tax authorities and said the further requests from the other jurisdictions would have no bearing on the case.
However, Swiss lawyers have continued to express reluctance to sign-off the deal which would see the names of 4,450 American customers suspected of tax crimes handed to the US’ Internal Revenue Service.
In its report UBS highlighted the damage the tax problems with the US had done to its reputation and said rectifying this was one of its main priorities.
“Restoring our reputation is essential to maintaining our relationships with clients, investors, regulators and the general public, as well as with our employees,” it said in its report.
“Accordingly, it is critical to the success of our strategic plans. Reputational damage is difficult to reverse. The process is slow and success can be difficult to measure. We have taken what we believe are very important steps to restore our reputation, but it is possible it will take longer to repair than we expect, particularly if further events were to occur that cause additional damage to our reputation.”
