Hard looks in Zurich

Sneaked out in the scrag end of the year, we find in the FT:

UBS, one of the biggest casualties of the subprime crisis, faces the additional prospect of scrutiny by Switzerland’s bank regulator.

The Federal Banking Commission (EBK) said on Sunday it would look into how the world’s largest wealth manager was forced to write off about $14bn on its portfolio of securities linked to US residential mortgages.

There are no surprises here of course, and one imagines that similar steps are underway at the SEC, the FED, FSA and so on for the firms they supervise. Happy New Year.