Interview with UBS CEO Rohner gives share a boost

 An interview with UBS CEO Marcel Rohner, published in advance by the Handelszeitung, helped the big bank's share price soar on Tuesday. What investors only found out on Wednesday: The interview did not refer to current information. The interview was conducted before Christmas and refers to the information available on December 10, 2007, the day on which the big bank announced the capital increase and the write-down of a further 10 billion dollars. In the interview with the Handelszeitung, Rohner said, among other things, that UBS's risk position had become substantially smaller. The market evidently believed the supposedly new assessment: UBS shares experienced a strong boost on Tuesday. Following the publication of the interview, the share price shot up by almost 4 percent to CHF 50.40. At the end of the day, the share was still up 1.82 percent.
The editor-in-chief of the Handelszeitung, Martin Spieler, told the AWP agency that the interview was only authorized for publication by UBS on Monday. A UBS spokeswoman confirmed this. NZZ and Blick argued in their Wednesday editions that the interview contained no new information. The NZZ wrote that Rohner's statements were "without the slightest news value". What Rohner said was "long known and about as oracular as any astrological forecast published at the turn of the year".