A fresh writedown for UBS.
An ethical writedown, that is. The below chart compiled by Covalance – an ethical research outfit. As you’ll notice, UBS – generally a poorly behaved child – has been very naughty since mid-April.
HSBC, meanwhile, is good as gold.
Last year major positive issues regarding the Banking industry have been: Climate Change, Energy, Diversity, CSR awards & rankings, Student grants, research & education, and Project finance & controversial loans.
Major negative issues: Subprime, Project finance & controversial loans, Climate Change, Human Rights, Job creations/cuts, and Apartheid.
Downsizing and subprime weighing heavy on UBS. Not, however, being a bank to shy away from the odd third-world loan to a despotic nasty, never really put the Swiss house in the running.
The really interesting part in the Covalance report though is below: ostensibly – a graph to indicate the sourcing of Covalence’s (voluminous) data; by proxy – a measure of how bearish different media outlets are.
The chart below shows sources having generated positive and negative news naming Banks from Jun 2007 – May 2008. The amount of different sources is: 724.
Thus politicaldiscontent.blogspot.com, perhaps predictably, has very little – nay, nothing – good to say about the banking industry, while PR newswire, nothing bad. The rest we present without comment.