What you could buy with the billions UBS lost

By Marc Jones and Paul Hoskins

LONDON (Reuters) - The $37 billion (18.7 billion pounds) written off by UBS is not only more than the GDP of most African countries, it would buy over 4000 tonnes of the world's finest caviar and pay for two Olympic games.

The staggering writedowns make UBS the hardest-hit bank by the recent credit crisis and governments, aid agencies and Hollywood glitterati must all be wincing at the thought of what the money could have been spent on.

The $37 billion figure is more than the entire GDP of 85 percent of African countries and roughly equals those of Slovenia and Sudan according to World Bank figures.

It would only fund the U.S. military's campaign in Iraq for 74 days based on Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's estimate of the $500 million daily cost of the war to the U.S..

It dwarfs the $10 billion committed by Geneva-based Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and would fund charity group Oxfam for 87 years based on its latest accounts.

In UBS's Swiss homeland it would buy you almost 95 million Loetscher cuckoo clocks, over 6 million Rolex watches, more than 2 million tonnes of Toblerone chocolate bars and almost 2 billion standard Victorinox Swiss Army penknives.

It would pay the bill to put on the Olympic games in London in 2012 twice.

The bank's well-heeled private clients must also be baulking at the eye-watering losses.