Now that Swiss banking giant UBS has agreed to give up the identities of thousands of its clients to US tax authorities, the country's secretive banking sector is facing a new challenge: how to rebuild a business that can no longer promise secrecy or ironclad protection from the tax man.

The answer, says UBS chief executive Oswald Grübel, is to explore new business strategies throughout the world, particularly in places such as the Middle East and Asia, where Swiss banks hope to sell the country's traditional virtues of political and economic stability to a growing crop of billionaires.