Swiss bank UBS AG said it would cut more jobs as it restructured its investment bank in a difficult environment for the financial industry.

"Clearly the industry is in a very difficult environment and we have to review the capacity with which we operate in this environment," said UBS Chief Executive Marcel Rohner in a conference call with journalists.

"That's something you'd usually do in a difficult environment," he said. "We will expect to be more specific with respect to all these measures in due course over the next weeks to come."

The Swiss banking giant UBS announced a further 19 billion dollars (£9.6bn) of writedowns related to the US sub-prime crisis.

The hit for the first quarter this year comes on top of the 18.5 billion US dollars (£9.3bn) written off by the bank during 2007 from US real estate-related assets.

It makes UBS by far Europe's worst-hit bank by the collapse in sub-prime lending across the Atlantic. The multi-billion dollar writedowns also appeared to have claimed the bank's chairman, with Marcel Ospel announcing he would not be standing for re-election later this month.