Updated 08:50  Zurich, Switzerland (Sonntag, Ger and TSR, Fre) – The German weekly Sonntag says unnamed sources believe UBS will show a 2008 loss of CHF20 billion when it reports final figures for the year 10 February. If confirmed – and a bank spokesperson says the figure is only “speculative,” it would be the largest annual loss by a company in Switzerland.

The story is at odds with some other recent media reports, such as one in Britain’s Economist last week, that says UBS is not yet out of trouble but it is in better shape to weather the global banking crisis than many banks.

UBS showed a small profit for its third quarter, but after a year in the red. It announced with Q3 figures that Q4 could prove difficult, given the state of world markets.

The bank is also in the news today for problems related to the Madoff scandal in the US, with Le Temps reporting that French investors in two of the bank’s Luxembourg-based funds, Luxalpha and Luxinvest, are lining up to sue the bank, which has reportedly frozen the assets of the funds.

UBS last week came under fire from the New York Times, in a story that was carried widely by media around the world and in Switzerland, about the angry reaction of some owners of the 19,000 offshore accounts being closed by the bank as it shifts away from offering offshore business to US residents in the wake of investigations by the IRS into UBS and other banks’ offshore business. Background: GenevaLunch

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