ZURICH: The Swiss National Bank is selling back to UBS this year the once-toxic assets it shouldered at the height of the financial crisis, which have since become profitable.
The repurchase, which clears one shadow of the financial crisis from the SNB's balance sheet, leaves the central bank to rely on its traditional investment areas of gold holdings and currency reserves.
The so-called Stabilisation Fund contributed 316 million Swiss francs ($339.35 million) to the central bank's consolidated result, the SNB said on Tuesday, helping to partly offset a 13.2 billion loss in the value of its unchanged gold holdings.
The SNB reported a consolidated loss of 7.3 billion Swiss francs in the first half of the year.
The SNB took on some $39 billion in assets as part of a government bail out in 2008. Under the terms of the rescue deal, UBS can repurchase the fund after the SNB loan to finance the fund has been paid in full.
Income from the central bank's forex positions amounted to 5.8 billion francs.
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