UBS cuts bonus pool for 2010 to $4.5 billion: source

Swiss bank UBS AG will pay out less money in form of bonuses in 2010 than in the previous year, Swiss weekly Sonntag reported on Sunday.

UBS's total bonus pool for its some 65,000 employees would amount to 4.3 billion Swiss francs ($4.5 billion), compared with 4.8 billion for 2009, the paper said.

One reason for the lower amount was that UBS raised the fixed part of employees' salaries by 10 to 20 percent, in line with practice at other banks, the paper said.

UBS spokesman Peter Hartmeier declined to comment on the numbers and said the bank would provide details about its salary system when it publishes full-year results on Tuesday.

Analysts expect the bank to post a net profit of 7.4 billion francs for 2010.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday UBS executives were concerned that pending bonuses will be inadequate to retain top talent at the Swiss bank, one of the hardest hit during the financial crisis.

Like other global banks, UBS has to comply with stricter regulation of salary systems and can only pay out a certain share of bonuses immediately. Part of any bonus has to be retained and payout depend on a bank's future performance.

UBS has worked to rebuild the investment bank run by Carsten Kengeter, whose 13.9 million franc bonus for 2009 was unpopular in Switzerland when the bank reported a net loss in the same year. Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel declined a bonus in 2009.

The bank's management also faces internal criticism over its employee appraisal system, two other Sunday papers said.

NZZ am Sonntag and Sonntagszeitung both reported complaints that new, sick or pregnant employees as well as employees close to retirement age got particularly bad ratings.

Under a so called forced ranking system, 20 to 35 percent of all employees had to be placed in the categories needs improvement or unsatisfactory, the papers said.

UBS spokesman Hartmeier confirmed the use of this system. The results of the 2010 assessment were now being analyzed, he said. We would need to address mistakes in the implementation of the system should the complaints prove to be correct, he said.

(Reporting by Sven Egenter; Editing by David Holmes)

($1=.9479 swiss franc)