, we neither have to take a specific rate of interest into account nor neutralise the expansion of money supply. purchase of swiss franc bonds with the purchase of swiss franc bonds issued by private domestic borrowers, we want to lower the risk premia in the capital market and, in so doing, make it easier for private issuers to raise capital. depending on the situation, we try to achieve the greatest possible impact on risk premia and capital market liquidity while deploying the least amount of capital. we do not want to give individual companies preferential treatment, instead we wish to ease the refinancing of companies in switzerland overall. by also purchasing in the primary market, we are directly promoting the raising of new capital. initially, we restricted our purchases to mortgage bonds ( pfandbriefe ). since the beginning of april, however, we have also been buying corporate bonds. in both of these segments, we hope to achieve the greatest impact on the market as a whole. in principle, we buy only marketable bonds and pay market prices. apart from the mortgage bonds, we did not buy any bonds issued by financial institutes. as of mid - june, our total purchases amounted to around chf 2. 5 billion in mortgage bonds and roughly chf 300 million in corporate bonds. for the time being, we plan to continue purchasing selectively. as regards volume, we have set no restrictions. the bond purchases also seem to have fulfilled their purpose. risk premia have come down significantly ( cf. chart 3 ). that said, we were able to benefit from the favourable mood in the financial markets. the fact that, in the past few weeks, several issuers found their way back to the issues market for the first time in a long time is further proof of the effectiveness of our strategy. snb stabfund developments in the market since the ubs package of measures was announced show that the transfer of illiquid assets from ubs to the snb stabfund was both appropriate and absolutely necessary. had these assets remained on ubs ’ s books and been valued at market price, the bank ’ s existence would have been seriously threatened these last few months. the transfer of assets was concluded at the beginning of april. ultimately, the total volume of assets transferred amounted to usd 38. 7 billion, where the purchase price was roughly usd 1 billion below the book value of the assets at ubs at the end of september 2008. in addition

jean - pierre roth : switzerland – a platform for global business summary of a speech by mr jean - pierre roth, chairman of the governing board of the swiss national bank and chairman of the board of directors of the bank for international settlements, at the forum de l'economie vaudoise, lausanne, 14 september 2007. the complete speech can be found in french on the swiss national bank ’ s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * within the past ten years, switzerland has become a genuine platform for global economic operations. from here, the international markets are being worked systematically, and an ever - growing part of our economic performance is now attributable to investment activity abroad. this is a welcome development since it allows us to keep high value - added jobs in switzerland. however, it also involves some risk because the international mobility of production has increased. consequently, the general conditions which help to keep switzerland attractive as a business location must be maintained. this platform for global economic operations has given us a role outside the european union and the euro area. thus we have chosen to face the challenge of globalisation instead of the challenge of european integration. our path may be demanding, but it is also promising!