Kweku Adoboli was arrested and charged with fraud and false accounting on Friday. He will remain in custody until his hearing on Thursday.

The incident has shaken confidence in the bank, as all three major credit rating agencies – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – are considering downgrading UBS’s credit rating because recent events suggest weaknesses in the bank’s risk control systems.

However, UBS boss Oswald Gruebel is refusing to resign over the incident. “I’m responsible for everything that happens at the bank,” he told Swiss Sunday newspaper, der Sonntag “if you ask me whether I feel guilty, then I would say no.”

UBS stated that Mr Adoboli admitted his fraudulent activities in response to an in-house investigation: “Following inquiries directed to him by UBS control functions that were reviewing his positions, the trader revealed his unauthorized activity on September 14, 2011,” the UBS statement said.

The 31 year old committed fraud and filed false accounts between January and September this year. He entered hedges into UBS’s risk management system when he in fact had no hedges in place and breached the risk limits set by UBS. As the stock market plummeted in response to the situation in Greece, UBS lost a lot of money.

However, UBS is now operating within its normal risk limits again, suggesting that his dodgy dealings have been unwound.

Have you lost trust in UBS in light of recent events? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

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The RBS bank has reported a statutory loss before tax of £794million after suffering losses from its exposure to the Greek Financial Crisis and from the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) Scandal.

The news follows an announcement from the Lloyds Banking Group who also reported pre-tax losses of £3.3bn over the past 6 months.

RBS’s loss comes after a £1.2bn profit in 2010, signalling the tough times ahead for the banking industry.

The massive loss is being blamed on the Greek financial crisis. The bank has written off its exposure to Greek Debt (mainly to Greek Government bonds) which is £733m. RBS also suffered from the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scandal. The bank allocated £850 million to cover claims for mis-selling PPI to its customers. Although Lloyds banking group came off much worse in the scandal with a £3.2bn compensation bill.

Since RBS is 84% owned by UK taxpayers the losses give the government and public more worry for the future. With news of sluggish UK economic growth, the Euro crisis, and the chaos in the US markets, there is little hope for financial stability in the near future.

RBS chief executive Stephen Hester has said that he believed the turmoil on the markets over the last few days, which saw RBS shares plummet on Thursday, showed the 2008 financial disaster was “not a banking crisis” but “one of global economic imbalances”.

Despite all the economic worries and RBS’s losses, Hester said the bank’s restructuring was “going well”, and added “We are getting risk down, the bad assets that have been dogging us from past years are coming down, and I feel comfortable with the way that part of the RBS plan is unfolding.”

How do you view the latest announcement from RBS? Do you think there is worse to come?

Wednesday week (25th November) will be D-Day for the banks in the long-running bank charges saga after it was announced earlier today that the Supreme Court will deliver their ruling on the legal battle according to MoneySavingExpert.

Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have ruled that charges can be assessed for fairness by the OFT, and if the Supreme Court upholds that view then it could reopen the floodgates for consumer claims for compensation against their banks.

The hearing is scheduled to be handed down at 9.45am where the law lords will deliver their verdict into whether or not charges of around £39 each for exceeding overdraft limits or returning a direct debit are fair. The Supreme Court has already hinted that it thinks they are unjust and are widely expected to throw out the banks’ appeal.

Over one million claims are currently stuck in limbo and clogging up the legal system, thanks to a FSA waiver and prior to the litigation banks had already reimbursed consumers with more than £1 billion before claiming was suspended.

However, even if the Supreme Court does find in favour of the OFT there is little to prevent the banks challenging their findings and so continuing to drag the whole affair on for much longer. According to MSE, it would be hoped that political intervention after the verdict would prevent any further appeals, especially given the fact that some of the banks in question, including Lloyds TSB and HBoS are taxpayer-owned.

“I’ve had letters from Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg all effectively committing to that and MoneySavingExpert.com, with its 8 million users a month, will try and ensure they stick to their promise.” Martin Lewis, consumer champion and founder of MoneySavingExpert.com commented.

Could this be the clearest indication yet that banks have admitted defeat in the long running bank charges saga? In a surprise move, the taxpayer-owned RBS-Natwest group has announced it will be slashing charges related to overdrafts – breaking ranks with the rest of the banking industry.

With a decision on whether the Office of Fair Trading can regulate charges levied by banks on overdrafts and direct debits due to be delivered anytime, the move could be seen as the bank’s attempt to pre-empt any judgement and from 1st October, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest customers will be charged only £5 for having a cheque bounced or direct debit returned unpaid; this is down from the current charge of £38. Meanwhile, the charge for paying an item on an overdrawn account falls from its current £30 to £15.

“This is obviously very welcome news and about time,” said Marc Gander of the Consumer Action Group. “Hopefully this is a recognition of how unfair their pricing system has been.”

If the Office of Fair Trading is successful in its ongoing legal battle with eight High Street banks – including RBS-NatWest – then banks and building societies would have to pay out billions of pounds in bank charge repayments to settle the 1.2 million cases currently being held in the legal system.

However, the decision by RBS-Natwest could be a clear signal that the banks are preparing for the worst and the move is sure to be welcomed by customers of both banks.

What’s more, such a move could well see other banks follow suit and cut their own charges in order to retain their customer base.