Union Bancaire Privée Alternative Investments

The year 2008 could not have been much worse for Geneva, Switzerland–based Union Bancaire Privée Alternative Investments. The fund-of-funds business of Swiss bank UBP endured two heavy blows that nearly wiped out its client and capital base: the global financial crisis, which resulted in poor investment returns and widespread redemptions from the hedge fund industry, and the Bernard Madoff scandal, which scorched UBP Alternative Investments’ reputation as a leading alternatives investor. This followed UBP’s exposure to Greenwich, Connecticut’s Amaranth Advisors’s 2006 implosion, a multistrategy hedge fund firm that lost $6.5 billion on a bad bet on natural gas prices…