Zurich  - The embattled Swiss banking giant UBS completed Friday the transfer of its toxic assets to the Swiss National Bank. The bank would take a
300-million-dollar charge in the first quarter for the transfer.

The new transfer of 22.2 billion dollars of securities, loans and derivatives would give the stabilization fund, set up by the central bank as part of a bailout for UBS, a total volume of assets of 38.7 billion dollars.

The final size of the fund was less than had been expected last year, when the bank was told it could transfer up to 60 billion dollars of assets. The bailout also included a cash injection.

UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, took more writedowns on bad investments last year than any other bank in Europe.

The assets had been earmarked for purchase last October.

The SNB said the purchase price for the final transfer was 700 million dollars below the book value of the assets at UBS at the end of September last year.

In a note, UBS said that approximately 300 million of this valuation difference would be charged to first quarter 2009 results. dpa