UBS has announced full-year results for 2006, showing pre-tax profit for its International and Swiss wealth management businesses, at a reco...

UBS has announced full-year results for 2006, showing pre-tax profit for its International and Swiss wealth management businesses, at a record SFr5,203 million ($4,160 million) up 25 per cent compared with 2005.

The results were boosted by a good fourth quarter with pre-tax profit of SFr1,418 million up 16 per cent from Q3. Total operating income, at SFr2,813 million in the fourth quarter increased 8 per cent from Q3.

Overall, operating expenses at SFr1,395 million in fourth quarter were static compared with the previous quarter although personnel expenses eased SFr 6 million to SFr755 million.

In full-year 2006, pre-tax profit for the US wealth management business was SFr582 million compared with SFr312 million in 2005, a rise of 86 per cent in US dollar terms.

In fourth quarter 2006, US pre-tax profit was SFr174 million, up from SFr 43 million in third quarter.

Total operating income in fourth quarter 2006 was SFr1,582 million.

In US dollar terms, operating income was 13 per cent higher than in third quarter. This reflected a record level of recurring income driven by higher asset levels in managed account offerings.

For the full year SFr113.3 billion in net client asset were added to the global wealth management businesses.

And in the last quarter UBS’s wealth management units recorded inflows of SFr21.7 billion, up from SFr19.7 billion in fourth quarter 2005.

Inflows in the international and Swiss wealth management business rose by SFr5.8 billion in the quarter to CHF 19 billion, mainly driven by inflows from Asia and the Americas.

Net new money in European wealth management was SFr1.8 billion in fourth quarter 2006, down from SFr3.7 billion in fourth quarter 2005, as higher asset gathering in Italy and France was more than offset by smaller inflows in other European countries.

However, inflows into the domestic wealth management business in the US were disappointing at SFr2.7 billion in fourth quarter, down from SFr 6.5 billion a year earlier and 3.4 billion in third quarter.