UBS AG is a Swiss global financial services company with its headquarters in Basel and Zürich, Switzerland. The company provides investment banking, asset management, and wealth management services for private, corporate, and institutional clients worldwide, and for retail clients in Switzerland as well. The name UBS was originally an abbreviation for the Union Bank of Switzerland, but it ceased to be a representational abbreviation after the bank’s merger with Swiss Bank Corporation in 1998. The company traces its origins to 1856, when the earliest of its predecessor banks was founded. UBS is the biggest bank in Switzerland, operating in more than 50 countries with about 60,000 employees around the world, as of 2014. It is considered the world’s largest manager of private wealth assets, with over CHF2.2 trillion in invested assets, and is a leading provider of retail banking and commercial banking services in Switzerland. According to the Scorpio Partnership Global Private Banking Benchmark in 2014, UBS had assets under management (AuM) of US$1,966.9 billion, representing a 15.4% increase in AuM versus 2013. UBS suffered among the largest losses of any European bank during the subprime mortgage crisis and the bank was required to raise large amounts of outside capital. In 2007, the bank received a US$9.7 billion capital injection from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (currently GIC Private Limited effective from July 2013), which remains one of the bank’s largest shareholders. The bank also received capital from the Swiss government and through a series of equity offerings in 2007, 2008, and 2009.