UBS Global Asset Management Launches US Equity Alpha Strategy.

NEW YORK -- UBS Global Asset Management today announced the recent launch of its new US Equity Alpha Strategy, which seeks to provide investors with more alpha by relaxing the long-only constraint when constructing a portfolio.

The Strategy seeks to outperform the Russell 1000 Index by 300 to 500 basis points per year, gross of fees, over a full market cycle with market-like risk. Alpha is the excess return relative to the benchmark. Unlike the quantitative approaches currently available, the Strategy takes a long-term fundamental approach to identifying shorting opportunities. This approach is a natural extension of the firm's 25-year investment process that has been successful at differentiating between overvalued and undervalued securities.

"Our clients are beginning to loosen their constraints in their pursuit of more alpha--yet they do not want to assume additional risk. We have developed the UBS US Equity Alpha Strategy as a core equity substitute that seeks to generate higher returns, without additional risk," said John Leonard, head of UBS Global Asset Management's North American Equities team. "While the Strategy is new, underpinning the Strategy are the key elements that have driven our investment approach for over two decades: extensive fundamental research with a global perspective, a globally integrated investment approach and our state-of-the-art Global Equity Risk System that evaluates both long and short positions when constructing a portfolio."

US Equity Alpha Strategy will generally invest in a broadly diversified portfolio of 75 to 125 securities. The Strategy typically seeks to add alpha by taking an average of 30% in short positions balanced by 130% on average in long positions and maintaining overall market exposure generally at 100%.

UBS Global Asset Management is one of the world's leading asset managers, providing traditional and alternative investment management solutions to private clients, financial intermediaries and institutional investors. Invested assets totaled some USD 571 billion as of September 30, 2005 worldwide.

UBS is one of the world's leading financial firms, serving a discerning global client base. As an organization, it combines financial strength with an international culture that embraces change. As an integrated firm, UBS creates added value for clients by drawing on the combined resources and expertise of all its businesses.

UBS is the world's largest wealth manager, a top tier investment banking and securities firm, and one of the largest global asset managers. In Switzerland, UBS is the market leader in retail and commercial banking.

UBS is present in all major financial centers worldwide. It has offices in 50 countries, with 38% of its employees working in the Americas, 38% in Switzerland, 16% in Europe and 8% in the Asia Pacific time zone. UBS's financial businesses employ more than 70,000 people around the world. Its shares are listed on the SWX Swiss Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE).

Nothing herein is intended as an offer to sell or a solicitation to offer to buy any investment product. No offer of any interest in any product will be made in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation or sale is not permitted, or to any person to whom it is unlawful to make such offer, solicitation or sale.

The Strategy involves certain risks. No guarantee or representation is made that the Strategy will be successful. The Strategy may include such investment techniques as short sales, margin transactions, leverage, derivatives trading, and futures. Employing these techniques can involve substantial volatility and can, in certain circumstances, substantially increase the adverse impact to which the Strategy's investments may be subject. As a manager of long-only and long-short portfolios, UBS Global Asset Management has implemented various safeguards to address potential conflicts of interest.

The Russell 1000 Index(R) is a broad-based, capitalization weighted index that measures the performance of the 1,000 largest companies in the Russell 3000 Index(R), and represents approximately 92% of the total market capitalization of the Russell 3000 Index. The Index is unmanaged and unavailable for direct investment. The Strategy is not sponsored, endorsed or promoted by Russell, and Russell bears no liability with respect to the Strategy.