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Switzerland

Swiss Bank UBS Slashes 10,000 Jobs

LE TEMPS (Switzerland), THE FINANCIAL TIMES (UK)

Worldcrunch

ZURICH - Swiss bank UBS officially announced Tuesday it is cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide after losing $42 billion during the financial crisis.

The Zurich based bank, which currently employs 64,500 people, is aiming to reduce its workforce by 2015, Swiss daily Le Temps reports. The bulk of the cuts will be focused on UBS's investment bank.

[rebelmouse-image 27085962 alt="""" original_size="800x532" expand=1]UBS's logo

UBS announced the cuts Tuesday as it reported further losses in the third quarter of this year: a net loss of 2.2 billion Swiss francs.

UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti said: "This decision has been a difficult one, particularly in a business such as ours that is all about its people.

"Some reductions will result from natural attrition and we will take whatever measures we can to mitigate the overall effect."

UBS contact: "Massacre here today."

— Alice Ross (@aliceemross) October 30, 2012

The bank will therefore refocus its activities on its private business bank and its smaller investment bank, thus moving away from the riskier trade and investment deals that were mainly responsible for the bank's losses.

In a joint statement with chairman Axel Weber, Mr. Ermotti said: "We will no longer operate to any significant extent in businesses where risk-adjusted returns cannot meet their cost of capital."

Huw van Steenis, an analyst for Morgan Stanley, told the Financial Times, "The move is very much a positive – investors want UBS to reveal the value in UBS’s profitable asset and wealth management units and reduce the drag from its underperforming investment banking unit.

“The key questions are what is the viability of the new business, what are the execution risks to the new model, and how many years will it be before UBS can start paying a dividend again,” he added.

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Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

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