Losses seem to be slowing on the 26 billion swiss francs of leveraged loans, asset-backed debt and other exotica UBS shifted last year from its trading to its loan book to avoid having to mark them to market.

UBS, Deutsche and other European banks made good use of this accounting trick introduced in October to avoid taking losses on volatile assets. The justification was that market dislocation exaggerated the assets’ true risk. Of course, it was only a temporary dodge as assets still have to be written down over time as borrowers default or forecast cashflows decline.