No exit: The problems facing UBS in its fixed income retreat

The stress of unwinding

hell

"Derivatives businesses are like hell: easy to enter and almost impossible to exit,” Warren Buffett said in 2002, as Berkshire Hathaway tried to get rid of the Gen Re Securities derivatives portfolio it acquired as part of a bigger deal in 1998. That portfolio contained 23,128 contracts with more than 600 counterparties. It took nearly five years to exit the bulk of the portfolio, costing Berkshire more than $400 million, but even today there are still some live trades on the books.

For Buffett

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