Moody's Investors Service has cut various ratings on UBS AG (UBS) pointing out the significant challenges the company continues to face in its Investment Banking and Wealth Management businesses.  Moody's has downgraded the bank financial strength rating and the long-term debt and deposit ratings of UBS AG. The bank financial strength rating was lowered two notches to C from B-, while its deposits and senior debt ratings were lowered to Aa3 from Aa2. The ratings for senior subordinated debt were slashed to A1 from Aa3. The outlook for all ratings is negative implying that further downgrades are possible over the next 12 to 18 months.   Moody’s has expressed its concern over the loss of customer confidence, which is reflected by the ongoing net fund money outflows in the wealth management business. Also a number of key employees have left the organization that resulted in a significant ...

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It is indeed an old adage that while goods things are to be preferred over bad things it is possible to get too much of the former. Looking at recent comments from the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia it is not difficult to imagine how these, albeit old and worn, pearls of wisdom may well have inspired Mr. Stevens in his effort to tiptoe the thigthrope between signalling the intention to raise rates into an expected economic recovery on the one side and trying to prevent the Aussie shoot of on helium into the sun with wings of wax on the other.

(quote Bloomberg)

Australia’s central bank Governor Glenn Stevens signaled a surge in the nation’s currency to near parity with the U.S. dollar has given him scope to slow the pace of future

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 19, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Cognizant (CTSH), UBS AG (UBS), Infosys Technologies Ltd (INFY), Repsol YPF S.A. (REP) and Eni S.p.A. (E).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Friday’s AnalystBlog:

Cognizant Buys UBS ISC

Cognizant (CTSH) recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire UBS India Service Centre Private Limited for about $75 million. Based in India, UBS ISC is a captive service provider to UBS AG (UBS) and currently employs 2,000 associates.

Headquartered in Zurich

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Cognizant (CTSH) recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire UBS India Service Centre Private Limited for about $75 million. Based in India, UBS ISC is a captive service provider to UBS AG (UBS) and currently employs 2,000 associates. Headquartered in Zurich and Basel, Switzerland, UBS AG is a global firm providing services to private, corporate and institutional clients. New Jersey-based Cognizant is a leading provider of consulting, technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2009. As part of the transaction, UBS and Cognizant have entered into a multi-year service agreement under which Cognizant will provide a range of business process outsourcing (BPO), knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), IT, and remote infrastructure management services to UBS divisions around the globe. Cognizant aims to help these divisions to reduce time-to-market, expand service delivery, and improve productivity, operational efficiency ...

Citigroup Inc. (C) is likely to pay $600,000 in fines to settle a claim by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) over derivatives transactions that helped foreign clients avoid taxes on dividends.  The regulator accused the bank of incompetently supervising transactions that helped international customers avoid U.S. taxes on stock dividends.  Citigroup Global Markets failed to supervise the system of trades and swap contracts and inadequately monitored certain communications. In accordance with the system, an overseas client sold U.S. shares to Citigroup before dividends were paid. However, Citi later received an amount similar to the dividend through a derivative contract.  Citigroup initially did not have written procedures to inspect the system. Though, later on the bank adopted a policy but employees failed to follow it consistently.  Major governments around the world are taking stringent actions to impede tax evasions in order to fix the ...

As part of strengthening its Global Energy banking practice UBS Investment Bank, a subsidiary of UBS AG (UBS), is hiring 18 Investment bankers who will focus on energy lending. Based in Dallas , this new team will have Darrell Holley serving as Managing Director and Global Head of energy lending.  The new team has significant expertise in energy lending and will complement UBS’s existing Energy Banking team in Houston and New York .  Holley will report to Stephen Trauber, Global Head of Energy banking at UBS. Previously, Holley was with Fortis Bank in Dallas , where he was Global Head of Oil and Gas banking.  Over the last month, UBS added more than a dozen of Managing Directors to its Investment Banking Department. The focus on the energy lending business is a strategic move as a result of the energy sector’s resiliency during the economic ...

UBS AG (UBS) intends to close its relationship with the Swiss government by purchasing its toxic assets back from the bad bank deal and hopes to turnaround by next year. With the recent rebound in the credit markets, the company believes that it could add back its assets to its balance sheets. However, this would not be possible before the second half of 2010. UBS AG is engaged in a fight with FINMA, Switzerland’s financial independent supervisory authority over its plan to opt out of the bad bank scheme. Under the bad bank scheme, the company incurs hefty charges for protecting against huge losses on toxic assets. However, FINMA has ruled out such possibilities in the midst of the current unstable market. Though the Swiss government sold its 9% stake in UBS last month, around $23.5 billion of UBS assets are there in the government’s bad bank....

Stocks moved lower for the third consecutive day on Friday, something that hasn’t happened in more than three weeks, as the bulls just couldn’t capitalize on a short-term overbought condition. Measures of selling pressure eased as the bears rested their knuckles after a two-day pummeling.

Investors are worried. The big question – as always – is whether the primary uptrend remains intact.

And the answer is yes.

To understand just what that target should be, let’s take a look at where we are right now.

Just before Wednesday’s sell-off, measures of the supply of stocks moved to new lows, while demand moved to new highs. This means bull-market-trading rules remain in effect. But as the cyclical bull market matures a little, we need to change the target of our buying efforts.

Although it looked like losses would be cut in the early afternoon, a lack of demand resulted in the major U.S. indices settling gently

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Moody’s allegedly hastened the credit crisis earlier in the decade by assigning top ratings to mortgage-backed securities that deteriorated later. Moreover, it is being probed by regulators worldwide, with several ongoing reviews in Europe for rating a European debt product, constant proportion debt obligations (CPDOs), at a higher-than-merited AAA.   According to the Wall Street Journal, Eric Kolchinsky a former analyst with Moody's Corp. (MCO) has accused Moody's Investor Service of issuing inflated ratings and will make the matter public by taking it to U.S. congressional investigators. Moody’s issued a high rating to a debt security, although it was planning to downgrade assets backing the securities. The Journal said that Moody's declined to make any comment but has suspended Mr. Kolchinsky, as he refused to cooperate with the investigation into the issues raised. Kolchinsky is scheduled to testify on the ratings firm reform before the House Committee ...

On Wednesday, the US and the Swiss governments officially signed the new dual tax treaty which represents an important development for the Obama administration’s endeavor to fight international tax evasion.

The Swiss government has agreed to the international standard on exchange of data. The treaty calls for compulsory arbitration in some tax cases. It also demands changes in the dividend treatments when a pension or retirement fund holds shares.

The US government pursued a tax evasion case against UBS AG (UBS), which was settled last month with the Swiss bank agreeing to provide account details of its 4,450 American clients who allegedly evaded taxes.

Over the years, Swiss banks have enjoyed large foreign deposit inflows as its domestic tax system emphasizes extreme confidentiality. However, adoption of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s standards for tax co-operation coupled with the lawsuit between the US Internal Revenue Service and

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