Considering it came less than two months after the last occasion when thousands of UBS shareholders assembled to hear about the Swiss banking group’s woes, Thursday’s special meeting in Lucerne held more information than might have been expected.

The 2,395 investors gathered in a dingy suburban hall and heard for the first time that the world’s biggest wealth manager looked poised to bow to US pressure and release the names of an unspecified number of American customers who may have committed tax fraud in squirreling away their assets.