It's been a bad bad week for Swiss bank UBS.

First it announces it's on the way to cutting 5500 jobs after losing $11 billion in the first quarter as a result of the US subprime crisis. Most of the jobs will go in the US and Britain, all part of a giant shakeup of the bank's aggressive push into the US during the boom time. And those jobs come after heads have been lopped off at the top.

The bank has been lurching form one disaster to the other. It's been the biggest casualty of the credit crunch among major European banks. Massive writedowns of more than $37bn have cost the jobs of its chief executive, Peter Wuffli, and the chairman, Marcel Ospel.

As part of the shake-up, UBS has signalled that it's getting out of the troubled US bond market which, in happier times, it had tried to dominate.

And to make things worse, we have reports that one of the most senior private bankers, Martin Liechti, has been detained by authorities in the US investigating whether the Swiss bank helped its American clients evade tax. The question is whether this is part of a push by US regulators to force the bank to come clean on its business practices.

No doubt some commentators might say that the worst of the subprime debacle is over. But even if they're right, and even if UBS does end slashing 7 per cent of its work force, it's problems are not about to go away. In the short-to-medium term, the outlook for UBS is bleak.