Wednesday, July 22, 2009

UBS fight with IRS convinces Swiss banks to drop U.S. clients

More ripples from the UBS-IRS standoff: Some Swiss banks reportedly aren't accepting or are cutting off U.S. clients out of concern the Internal Revenue Service might get into a similar fight with them over client account information as it has with UBS AG.

DowJones Newswires says it's "a sign that UBS AG's high-profile spat with the Internal Revenue Service is chipping away at Switzerland's private banking industry."

The IRS is after information about the UBS accounts of 52,000 U.S. citizens in a major tax-evasion probe, challenging not just UBS but Swiss bank-secrecy laws.