Swiss bank UBS, dramatically hit by the US home-loan crisis, said on Friday it had "successfully" raised almost 16 billion Swiss francs (9.9 billion euros, 15.3 billion dollars) from shareholders through an issue of new stock.
The bank had set out to raise new capital of 15.97 billion Swiss francs through issuing shares reserved for existing shareholders, enabling them to subscribe to each new share at 21 Swiss francs.
The price of UBS shares firmed in early morning trading, by 1.9 percent to 24.78 Swiss francs, against a market which was showing a fall of 0.2 percent.
About 99.4 percent of the new shares issued were taken up by shareholders.
The remaining 4,828,280 shares which were not subcribed would be sold by UBS Investment Bank in open market transactions today, the bank said.
UBS, the biggest Swiss bank, became one of the banks worst hit by the US home-loan subprime crisis, writing down the value of assets by more than 37 billion dollars since the crisis took hold last year.
It had to resort to raising capital twice to bolster its coffers.
The first came through an infusion of 11 billion Swiss francs from Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, and another two billion Swiss francs from an unnamed Middle East investor.
The bank is scheduled to publish its second-quarter results on August 12.
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