BASEL, Switzerland — UBS chief executive Oswald Gruebel on Sunday ruled out resigning over the rogue trading that cost the Swiss banking giant $2 billion in losses, as it emerged that the 31-year-old at the center of the allegations made bets worth five times that amount.
London-based equities trader Kweku Adoboli was arrested in the early hours of Thursday morning and later charged with fraud and false accounting after allegedly racking up $2 billion in losses through unauthorized trades.
However, Adoboli placed financial bets worth $10 billion before his losses were detected, The (London) Sunday Times reported quoting unnamed “insiders.”
The size of Adoboli’s positions, and the length of time they went undetected, raise further questions of risk controls at UBS, the newspaper reported. The $10 billion portfolio was wound down by midday Friday.
Gruebel insisted that he felt no guilt over what had happened, and while it was his responsibility, there was little he could have done to stop it.
“I am responsible for everything that happens in the bank. But if you ask me if I feel guilty, then I would say no,” Gruebel said in an interview with Swiss weekly newspaper Sonntag.
But Gruebel said “you can’t do anything” when faced with such “criminal intent.”
Asked whether he would take ultimate responsibility for the rogue trading and quit, the German said, “I am not thinking about resigning.”
Gruebel, who took over UBS at the height of the financial crisis, has come under pressure to resign.
The bank’s honorary chairman, Nikolaus Senn, said late Friday that he doubted Gruebel could stay, accusing him of failing to keep control of what was happening on the bank’s trading floors.
“I don’t know how many times Oswald Gruebel flew to London in order to understand from the managers on site what was going on,” Senn was quoted as saying by AFP.