LONDON (Reuters) – UBS plans to stick to its proposed dividend for 2018 despite a 4.5 billion euro (3.92 billion pounds) hit from a French tax ruling that the bank has appealed, CEO Sergio Ermotti said on Friday.
“There is no intention to deviate from our proposed 2018 dividend of 0.70 Swiss francs ($0.6994) per share,” Ermotti said in a call discussing the ruling’s implications with investors and analysts.
“In respect to the outlook for our capital returns beyond the financial year 2018, we remain committed to our policy,” he said, adding that included increasing the group’s dividend by a mid- to high-single digit percentage each year and returning any excess capital, mainly through share buybacks.
(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi in London, editing by John Miller in Zurich)
