Corporate

Swiss bank UBS reported net income of 738 million Swiss francs (US$736 million) in the fourth quarter, compared with 949 million a year earlier, due in part to tax effects, but says rising investor confidence in the United States could boost its wealth management business.

"Despite a very challenging market environment in 2016, we achieved solid results, thanks to our balanced business and geographic mix, as well as our strong focus on executing our strategy," said CEO Sergio Ermotti.

UBS also recorded more than 1 billion francs in negative income due to cash-flow hedges, citing a drop in unrealized gains from hedging derivatives as long-term interest rates increased.

Novartis may spin off its struggling Alcon eye care business and is to launch a share buyback programme worth up to $5 billion, the Swiss drugmaker said on Wednesday in reporting fourth-quarter results that lagged market expectations.

Its sales were flat in the fourth quarter while posting a $120 million operating loss, forcing a critical look at whether to sell eye care division. "We’ve not ruled anything out, all options are on the table," Chief Executive Joe Jimenez said on a results news conference call.

Yahoo says its closing its Verizon deal in the second quarter instead of in the first quarter, which is when it initially said the deal would close. The $4.8 billion deal was originally slated to close in the first quarter, but that was before Yahoo reported two massive data breaches that analysts say may scrap the entire deal.

Although Yahoo continues to work to close the acquisition, there’s still work required to meet closing the deal’s closing conditions, the company said in an earnings statement, without elaborating.

IBM reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations on Thursday, thanks largely to the company’s transition towards higher-margin and faster-growing businesses like the cloud and Big Data analytics. But the iconic New York-based enterprise technology company has now suffered 19 straight quarters of declining year-over-year total revenues, a streak that has kept would-be investors on the sidelines.

While earnings per share rose 4% from a year ago, revenues were down 1%, the company said. IBM’s revenue has decline from the year-ago quarter since April 2012, when sales were nearly flat.

Swiss Life company Zurich will cut 240 jobs in the UK as part of a business restructure. The company said it will remove 240 jobs from the UK business after plans were announced last year to merge the life and general insurance departments. The new structure will be effective immediately but the firm will consult on the job cuts before making any decisions.

Zurich said the jobs cuts would not be in ‘market facing’ roles and were likely to be from back office positions. It said cuts would be made where there was overlap between life and general insurance positions.

Deutsche Bank has warned its employees of more job cuts to come. In addition to announcing radically reduced 2016 bonus payments for top managers, the bank told some staff on Wednesday that layoffs will continue, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions as Bloomberg reported.

In a note to staff on Wednesday, John Cryan, chief executive, said Deutsche’s management board had decided to waive their bonuses for 2016, the second consecutive year in which top executives at Germany’s biggest bank have forgone such awards after it finalised its $7.2 billion legal settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice related to the sale of mortgage bonds into the peak of the global financial crisis.

MasterCard has put forward proposals to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after the watchdog expressed concern over its acquisition of VocaLink. The CMA said the merger could make it difficult for the UK ATM network Link to negotiate a good infrastructure service because of reduced competition.

The CMA had given MasterCard and VocaLink an ultimatum to remedy its competition concerns or face an in-depth investigation.

The Geberit Group reported that its net sales increased by 8.3% to 2.81 billion Swiss francs in the 2016 financial year. Adjusted for currency effects and in organic terms, net sales rose by 6.4%. Due to synergies from the integration of the Sanitec business, volume growth and lower prices for raw materials, management expects an adjusted operating cashflow margin (EBITDA margin) of around 28.5 percent for the year as a whole – a figure that is significantly up on the previous year.