Tag: bank

UBS has created a new unit dedicated to diversity and inclusion. Switzerland’s largest bank has created a new wealth management unit aimed at mobilizing client funds to offer investments that promote equality and expand outcomes for underrepresented or marginalized groups, according to a report.

Karen Sunderam will lead the group from New York. According to her LinkedIn profile, she has been with UBS for nearly five years and has been the head of inclusive investing solutions since May last year.

By responding to client requests for investment options that reflect personal values and are aimed at social good, UBS will offer clients opportunities to channel their money to firms at least partly owned by minorities. This also includes products led by portfolio managers who self-identify as racial or ethnic minorities, women, veterans, disabled and LGBTQ, «Bloomberg» reported.

Under CEO Ralph Hamers, UBS has dedicated itself to the «purpose» of reinventing investing and connecting people for a better world. Head of sustainability Michael Baldinger was tasked in May 2021 with weaving these threads across the group and advancing diversity.

In the latest of Roger Ng’s 1MDB trial, an FBI agent claims that his wife played a major role in creating a shell company to open an account with Swiss financial giant UBS.

Roger Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, played a central and crucial role» in helping her husband launder illicit payments from the 1MDB bond deals.

Prosecutors claim that Low and his associates siphoned at least $500 million from the first $1.75 billion bond transactions called «Project Magnolia» with ex-Goldman colleague Tim Leissner testifying that he had received more than $60 million from Low into accounts controlled by his then-wife Judy Chan Leissner before using those accounts to send $35.1 million to Ng through an entity set up by Lim.

In the latest development, FBI special agent Sean Fern took the stand and testified about Lim’s role in setting the shell entity using a raft of emails as proof.

According to Fern, Lim inquired about creating a shell entity one day before the first 1DMB bond deal closed. The shell company – first named «Silken Waters» before later being renamed «Victoria Square» – was opened along with a bank account at UBS.

Although Lim’s mother, Tan Kim Chin, was listed as the beneficial owner, Fern said he traced emails showing that bankers communicated directly with Lim about Victoria Square and the UBS account.

Ng has argued that the money sent from Leissner’s wife to Lim, who has not been charged, was for an unrelated business transaction.

Switzerland’s biggest bank warns about ongoing effects on markets and the global economy from measures caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Out of UBS’ total emerging market exposure of $20.9 billion at the end of last year, $634 million was attributable to exposure in Russia, the bank said in its annual report for 2021 Monday.

This amount, which has been reduced since, does not include assets totaling $51 million held in the bank’s Russian subsidiary. Nor does it account for unexpected increases in exposures due to settlement risk on certain open transactions with Russian banks and non-bank counterparties or Russian underlying due to sanctions, it said. As of March 3, the bank identified a «small number» of global wealth management clients subject to the recently introduced sanctions, who had outstanding loans below $10 million.

As of the same date, UBS’ market risk exposure to Russia was limited while direct country risk exposures to Ukraine and Belarus as of December 31 were insignificant. Furthermore, the bank does not hold any material reliance on Ukrainian or Belarusian collateral within its Lombard portfolio, it said.