Perhaps counter-intuitively, UBS this morning thanked the Swiss authorities and welcomed their decision to give the green light for the US-Swiss tax treaty, set to lay bare confidential data on thousands of its American clients to US authorities.

On the surface this may seem like yet another blow for Switzerland's largest bank, which last year admitted it used hidden offshore bank accounts to help thousands of US clients evade taxes on about $20bn (€16.2bn) of income.