UBS

Several major banks have joined a project called Utility Settlement Coin (USC) that is intended to facilitate the issuance by central banks around the world of currencies using Blockchain technology.

Six international banks: Barclays, Credit Suisse, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, HSBC, MUFG and State Street have joined up with UBS to develop a new digital cash system using the blockchain. BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Santander and the blockchain company Clearmatics joined the project back in 2015.

Three public pension funds, including the Orange County Employees Retirement System, have sued a half-dozen Wall Street banks, alleging they illegally conspired to control a corner of the stock market, leading to higher charges for the funds and thus less money for retirees.

UBS kept a cautious outlook on the second half of 2017 on Friday after it reported an unexpected rise in second-quarter net profit, boosted by higher earnings at its flagship wealth management business.

UBS said net income was 1.17 billion Swiss francs ($1.21 billion) during the second quarter, up from CHF1.03 billion a year earlier and far overshooting the average forecast in a Reuters analyst poll for 879 million francs. Operating income fell slightly to CHF7.3 billion from CHF7.4 billion a year earlier.

The UBS Swiss consumption indicator rose to 1.38 points in June from a downwardly revised 1.32 in May, the Swiss bank’s economists said on Wednesday.

"UBS consumption indicator printed 1.38 in June, pointing to subdued growth in Swiss private consumption in recent months. Relatively weak growth in employment was much to blame for the lackluster number, however this was offset somewhat by robust new car registrations data and overnight hotel stays by Swiss nationals" the noted reported.

HSBC and UBS have each agreed to pay $14 million to settle private U.S. litigation accusing them of rigging an interest rate benchmark used in the $483 trillion derivatives market, Reuters reported. Switzerland’s largest lender was one of 10 banks accused of having rigged the Isdafix index, which is used to price swap transactions, commercial real estate mortgages and structured debt securities.

The millennial generation could be worth as much as $24 trillion in three years’ time, according to UBS, not bad when it’s roughly 1.5 times the size of the U.S. economy in 2015.

But the research shows a surprise: in the Middle East millennials are more hard-working and entrepreneurial compared to their global peers.

Robots are moving on to the trading floors of investment banks. Many of the world’s biggest banks have for years been automating manual, repetitive tasks done by support staff to save money. But now they are putting the latest forms of artificial intelligence to work at the heart of operations among their star traders, allocating funds and analysing data to develop strategies.

According to a report by the Financial Times, UBS is about to take robots to trading floors. The company has shown how two AI solutions can assist traders in enhancing their performance.

Swiss bank UBS is weighing up whether to move banking jobs in London to Frankfurt, Madrid or Amsterdam to cope with Britain’s planned departure from the European Union, Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in an interview with CNBC.

With around 5,000 employees based in London, Switzerland’s largest lender has been preparing contingency plans even before British citizens, in a referendum, voted to leave the EU in June 2016.

"I think Frankfurt is a location of choice. There are different, other locations that could come into consideration," Ermotti said in the interview broadcast on Monday, according to a transcript.