From "you and us" to "us and them", ubs, a dishevelled Swiss bank, announced on August 12th that it was stepping away from its integrated model and establishing its investment-banking, wealth-management and asset-management divi-rnsions as stand-alone entities, ubs's management scoffs at the idea that this will lead to the sale of the investment bank, but a break-up is precisely what many inside and outside the bank think is needed. The problem, they say, is that big banks like ubs and America's Citigroup have got the wrong model.rnIt is true that risk-loving investment bankers and stability-prizing private bankers make unlikely bedfellows. The recklessness of ubs's investment bankers has made the bank the credit crunch's biggest total loss-maker to date. Clients of its private bank are spooked: the wealth-management arm suffered an overall loss of deposits in the second quarter. Swiss regulators are also unnerved and want a more robust capital regime for the country's big banks.
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