UBS had already embarked on a sweeping restructuring when Oswald Grübel, the bank’s chief executive, announced his resignation on Saturday in the wake of an alleged $2.3bn rogue trading scandal. But his dramatic exit, after 10 days of speculation, confirmed that the Swiss group will be unlikely to rejoin the ranks of the global investment banking elite and that its future as an integrated or “universal” bank remains uncertain.
It has been a rapid fall from grace for an institution that as recently as April was delivering better than expected first-quarter results – even in some of its hardest-hit divisions, such as fixed income, currencies and commodities trading.
