Mortgage woe hits Swiss bank UBS

Banking giant UBS today plunged to an annual loss of 4.38 billion Swiss francs (€2.7bn) after huge write-downs linked to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.

UBS said 2007 was “one of the most difficult in its history” as it wrote off $13.7bn (€9.4bn) on bad bets in the US mortgage market in the last quarter.