Zurich - Swiss banking giant UBS AG reported Tuesday its first profit in four quarters.

The world's biggest wealth manager, which has emerged as one of the major victims of the recent round of financial turmoil triggered by the US mortgage market meltdown, reported a third-quarter profit of 296 million Swiss francs (256.3 million dollars).

The Zurich-based bank said last month it planned to raise 6 billion Swiss francs from the government and it planned to shift 60 billion Swiss francs of toxic assets to a special Swiss central bank fund.

Tuesday's third-quarter profit brought to an end four consecutive quarterly losses for the bank.

Releasing the results, UBS went on to say, "Whilst the situation was very difficult at the start of October, there have been encouraging signs for net new money flows following the announcement."

Also boosting the third-quarter earnings was a credit gain of 2.2 billion francs as well as a tax credit of 913 million francs.

However, UBS said its key wealth management business recorded outflows of 49.3 billion Swiss francs during the quarter.

The bank also said additional third-quarter writedowns of 4.4 billion dollars bringing the total writedowns linked to the subprime crisis to about 49 billion dollars. (dpa)