UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said Tuesday that it would write down another $19 billion related to the American real estate market and said that its chairman, Marcel Ospel, would step down. UBS said the write-down would result in a first-quarter loss of about 12 billion Swiss francs, or $12 billion, and that it would seek new capital of about $15 billion, the second time it has announced plans to raise money since the credit markets began to contract. The UBS board proposed that Peter Kurer, the bank's general counsel, take over as chairman, pending shareholders' approval at a meeting April 23. The news came as the biggest German lender, Deutsche Bank, warned Tuesday that market conditions “have become significantly more challenging during the last few weeks,” and said it expected to write about 2.5 billion euros, or $3.9 billion, on real estate loans and assets from the United States. Global banks have now written down more than $200 billion of soured loans since last summer when the subprime mortgage market began to implode. UBS has written off $37.1 billion in losses related to the American housing market, including the $18.1 billion it wrote off in the third and fourth quarters of 2007, a bank spokesman, Dominik von Arx, said in Zurich. UBS said the $15 billion rights issue was underwritten by a syndicate of banks led by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs. In February, UBS raised 13 billion francs in new capital from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and an unidentified Middle Eastern investor. That led some shareholders to call for a board shake-up and for Mr. Ospel to step down. In an e-mailed statement on Tuesday, Jennifer Lewis, the head of communications at the Singapore fund, which bought 11 billion francs of UBS shares in the previous rights issue, said executives would “examine the terms of the rights issue and obtain other necessary information before we decide” whether to participate in the new capital increase. A banking analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort in London, Folkert Jan Van der Veer, said, “Based on what we've heard for the last few months, it's no surprise that a bank like UBS, with significant market exposure, is coming out with sizeable write-downs.” “If the markets remain difficult,” he said, “you can't rule out that further write-downs will follow.” Mr. Van der Veer said the fact that the rights issue was fully subscribed meant that UBS's “capitalization remains relatively strong.” UBS said its tier-1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, would stand at about 10.6 percent after the new capital infusion. In a statement, the UBS chief executive, Marcel Rohner, said “the environment remains difficult, and while we are committed to further substantially reducing our exposures we do not want to undertake sales of positions at severely distressed levels.” UBS is segregating its assets related to the American residential real estate market into “a portfolio work-out unit, separating these positions from its other, profitable businesses,” it said, and it left open the possibility that the unit would eventually be divested. UBS had a 12.5 billion franc loss in the fourth quarter of 2007. Its shares, which are down about 58 percent over the last year, rose 8.5 percent in Zurich afternoon trading. Shares of Deutsche Bank, down about 26 percent over the last year, were up 3.3 percent in Frankfurt. Other European bank shares rallied, including Credit Suisse which rose 6.2 percent, and Societe Generale rose 6.2 percent. HSBC Holdings rose 1.8 percent. A senior banking analyst at ING Financial Markets in Madrid, Carlos Garcia, said banking sector shares rose because “People were expecting further write-downs and now there's a little more certainty about the situation, so in the short term there is some relief.” Nonetheless, Mr. Garcia said he remains concerned about “those banks that have not been more aggressive about marking down their securities portfolios and which had low capital ratios.” Many European banks, he said, “are still in denial” about the bad loans on their books. UBS said it has remaining exposure to the subprime market of about $15 billion, down from $27.6 billion on Dec. 31, while its exposure to so-called Alt-A positions declined to $16 billion from $26.6 billion. Alt-A loans are given to customers with little credit history or minor credit problems. But it said its exposure to auction-rate certificates, another part of the market that has been hurt of late, rose to $11 billion from $5.9 billion. Mr. Von Arx said that was because the bank had participated in unsuccessful auctions for the securities in January. Deutsche Bank said in a statement that its write-downs related to “leveraged loans and loan commitments, commercial real estate, and residential mortgage-backed securities,” particularly Alt-A securities. It said it would have tier-1 capital ratio at the end of the first quarter of 8 percent to 9 percent, consistent with its published targets. Deutsche Bank said in February that its fourth-quarter 2007 profit fell 48 percent from a year earlier, to 953 million euros, but it announced no subprime write-downs for the period. In the third quarter of last year, the bank wrote off 2.2 billion euros in subprime lending. It will report its first
