Private banking is meant to be boring. But somehow ubs, the world's largest private bank, forgot that. Some of its employees, in their zeal to win the business of wealthy Americans with a predilection for fibbing to the taxman, seem to have confused discretion with spycraft. Instead of waiting for clients to come to it in Switzerland, the bank trained some members of staff in counter-surveillance techniques, equipped them with encrypted laptops and secret e-mail addresses and then infiltrated them into America to meet clients, according to American prosecutors.rnThe price of such subterfuge has been high. On February 18th ubs agreed to pay fines of $780m and to hand the American authorities the names and account details of up to 300 clients. A week later Marcel Rohner, its youthful chief executive, unexpectedly stepped down.rnAlthough he is credited with having salvaged what he could of ubs by raising capital early, and he helped it withstand steep losses and a slumping share price during 20 months at the helm, Mr Rohner could not, it seems, entirely escape his past. Although not accused of any wrongdoing, he was head of the wealth-management business when many of the shenanigans are alleged to have occurred.
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