In 1999, when Marcel Ospel became chief executive of the newly formed UBS, one of his first tasks was to explain that its investment banking division, then called Warburg Dillon Read, had made a full-year loss of €632m.

Ospel could not be held accountable as the losses racked up by Union Bank of Switzerland in relation to collapse hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management occurred before its merger with Swiss Banking Corporation, which Ospel ran.