Report: UBS to cut 8,000 employees

The bank said layoffs will likely be announced when it presents its first-quarter financial results on May 6.

UBS AG is set to lay off roughly 8,000 employees.
The Zurich, Switzerland-based company said layoffs will likely be announced when it presents its first-quarter financial results May 6, according to Swiss weekly Sonntag, which didn’t cite a source.
Some 3,000 cuts will initially affect the company’s operations in the United States and in Western Europe, with the remaining 5,000 jobs to be eliminated this autumn, primarily in administrative functions.
UBS declined to confirm the number of jobs that will be cut, but said that there will be capacity adjustments at the company’s investment-banking operations and that the number of employees will decrease in the next 12 months as the bank does not fill positions that free up, according to the report.
The report also cited insiders as saying UBS will likely have to take further write-downs of almost $9.67 billion, leading to a first-quarter loss of $11.6 billion.
UBS’s investment bank already has been hit by over $37 billion in write-downs related to subprime mortgages.