“The top managers of the UBS didn’t know the details of what they had gotten themselves into. And because they had never really set up any independent, comprehensive monitoring systems, no one could prevent these losses despite numerous warnings”. This concise summary of the problems at UBS does not, however, refer to the $37bn (€24bn) of writedowns announced in the past year.

Instead, it comes from The Fall of UBS, a book published by Swiss writer Dirk Schütz on the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Banking Corporation in 1997 and the subsequent revelation of derivatives losses of more than $800m.