Senior executives at UBS, now under investigation by US authorities, knew some of their bankers had acted in a way that meant they risked breaching American securities laws at least a year before the US inquiries began, a letter seen by the FT shows. The May 2006 letter, now in the hands of US authorities, was written by Peter Kurer, now UBS chairman and then general counsel, and copied to Marcel Rohner, then head of private banking and now group chief executive, as well as Lawrence Weinbach, a UBS director who sits on the board’s audit committee. In the letter, Kurer acknowledges he received information from a whistleblower about problems at the Swiss bank because of inadequate securities registration.
