UBS is expected to announce further job cuts today of up to 10 per cent of its workforce, on top of the 7,000 staff that it has dismissed so far.

The Swiss bank refused to confirm speculation that between 1,900 and 2,000 staff could be let go from the investment banking unit’s 19,000 total workforce. An announcement is likely to be made today at UBS’s extraordinary general meeting, which has been called to vote on the election of four new board members.

The bank is due to reveal its third-quarter results on November 4 but will use the meeting to declare more writedowns. As the credit crunch toll mounts, UBS has been the worst-hit European bank, with almost $42 billion (£24 billion) in losses. JPMorgan analysts said yesterday that they expected a pretax writedown of $3.8 billion in the second half.

Shareholders will also vote on plans revealed in August for UBS to abandon its one-bank strategy and run its investment banking, wealth management and asset management businesses as separate divisions.

Olivant, the activist investor that has plagued UBS, will not be able to vote at the meeting. The private equity enterprise held its SwFr1.4 billion (£703 million) worth of UBS shares – equivalent to 2.78 per cent of the Swiss bank – with Lehman Brothers, the collapsed US bank.

Olivant is thought to have entered into an agreement in which it handed over ownership of stock to the bank as collateral on loans. It is not known what Lehman Brothers did with the stock after the transaction. It could have lent the stock to other funds or used it as collateral on its own borrowings. Yesterday, Olivant remained locked in discussions with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the liquidator of Lehman Brothers, over the whereabouts of the shares, without which Olivant cannot vote at today’s meeting.

It was estimated yesterday that at least 1,000 hedge funds that dealt with Lehman’s prime brokerage business could be affected by the bank’s collapse. Oak Group, a Chicago hedge fund manager, said that it was likely to go out of business after losing 70 per cent of its assets.

Meanwhile, UBS appeared yesterday to be edging closer to settling allegations in the US that the bank helped rich Americans to evade tax. The bank said that it would not hand customer information directly to the American authorities, which are investigating offshore services provided by UBS in 2006 and 2007, but hinted that the information may be provided by the Swiss authorities.

— Artemis, the UK fund manager, has been put up for sale by Fortis, the beleaguered Belgian-Dutch financial group that was saved from the brink of collapse this week by an €11.2 billion capital injection from three Benelux states. Artemis, which manages about £15 billion of assets, is expected to attract bids from trade buyers, particularly from the United States.

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