UBS shareholders on Wednesday approved, as expected, the election of Peter Kurer as chairman and plans for a SFr15bn ($14.8bn) rights issue to recapitalise Europe’s most severe casualty of the US subprime crisis.

But they also laid down a marker that the successor to Marcel Ospel had to deliver big changes in transparency and corporate governance if Wednesday’s shareholders’ meeting in Basel – the second such gathering in 2008 – were not to be followed by another before the year was out.