UBS’s CRO on the hunt for hidden risks

Swiss bank has rung the changes in its attempt to catch hard-to-measure risks, but “you are never safe”, warns Christian Bluhm

Angela Straub

Most people who work in capital markets – and many who don’t – will know the names Kweku Adoboli and Tom Hayes, the rogue trader and Libor cheat, respectively, who went to jail for crimes committed while they worked at UBS.

Christian Bluhm, the bank’s chief risk officer, knows their names, too. And while he doesn’t mention them directly, they cast a long shadow over his interview with Risk.net. These are the kind of risks that scare him most, Bluhm says: potentially huge losses that lurk unseen