Occupy London ‘repossess’ empty UBS block

BRITISH anti-capitalist protesters have occupied a third location in London, “repossessing” a large empty office block owned by Swiss banking giant UBS.

A dozen protesters from the Occupy London group scaled ladders to gain access overnight to the first floor of the sprawling office complex in the capital’s financial district.

“UBS was bailed out for $60 billion (€44bn) in 2008 and had a rogue trader that lost billions just this year,” said the group’s spokeswoman Tanya Paton.

“It just shows how wealthy and incompetent banks are that they can lose this money and not even notice. Swiss banks have been used as a tax haven for everyone from the Nazis to Gaddafi,” she said.

The Occupy London group, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, has set up camps outside St Paul’s Cathedral and in Finsbury Square in the heart of the City.

Protesters led reporters on a tour of the cavernous complex. Rubble-filled rooms were littered with screwdrivers, tins of paint, ropes and bedding.

Occupiers had been tidying up with brooms and vacuum cleaners. An executive pay advice brochure lay discarded under piles of broken glass on damp-stained carpets. Old computers, invoice files and Venetian blinds were still in place.

The protesters said the location would be reopened today as a “Bank of Ideas” but there would be no permanent residential occupation as at the other camps.

The Occupy group argued while banks were repossessing homes of families who could not keep up their mortgage repayments, they were sitting on huge empty properties themselves. Official figures show 9,200 homes in Britain were repossessed by mortgage lenders in the third quarter of the year.

UBS has been in the headlines in Britain after one of its London-based employees was charged with rogue trading which the bank said had cost it some $2.3 billion (€1.7bn).

Kweku Adoboli, a former director of exchange-traded funds at UBS, is due to enter a plea to those charges in court next week.

UBS, which confirmed it was the legal owners of the site, said the building was unoccupied and the action had no impact on either its business or its staff.

Under laws governing squatting, building owners have to go to court to obtain a possession order, which could take a month.