Mr Marcel Ospel, the bank's former chairman who stepped down earlier this year amid heavy criticism of UBS' staggering losses on its US subprime home loan exposure, accounted for more than two thirds of the sum, PR agency Balanx said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mr Ospel and former board members Stephan Haeringer and Marco Suter made their decision voluntarily and 'want to make it clear that they are facing up to reality,' Mr Balanx said.

UBS said in a brief statement that the three men had 'voluntarily renounced their payments. We welcome this decision.'

The decision by the three former board members came after another former head of the bank, Peter Wuffli, said earlier this month that he was giving up 12 million Swiss francs,

'I have in all given back 12 million francs which were coming to me under my contract,' Mr Peter Wuffli, who served as UBS president, told the weekly NZZ am Sonntag.

Mr Ospel in particular has become the whipping boy in the problems engulfing UBS, which has had to be bailed out by the Swiss government to the tune of 60 billion francs and whose share price has plummeted to the fury of small investors.

UBS said on last Monday that it would not pay a bonus to its chairman and board of directors for 2008 and would use a different model in the future to determine how salaries are paid.

Mr Ospel was quoted in the Balanx statement as saying: 'I strongly believe the current solution is the right one. I hope that my action will help to resolve a situation that was inconceivable to me until a short time ago.'

The statement added that the move by the three former board members 'should in no way be construed as an admission of guilt in a legal sense.'

Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz earlier this month called on 'the top staff at UBS to reimburse spontaneously their undeserved bonuses.'

He said that 'the initial idea of bonuses has been partly perverted,' adding that 'unacceptable things took place' and that the 'people concerned should go ahead with the paying back of their bonuses.' -- AFP