Some UBS execs should pay back bonuses: FinMin

ZURICH (Reuters) - UBS managers who contributed to the bank's disastrous venture into the U.S. subprime market should consider paying back their bonuses, Switzerland's finance minister said on Monday.

UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank and one of the worst-hit lenders in the financial crisis, is facing domestic criticism over executive pay after risky U.S. investments nearly brought it to its knees and prompted the government to step in.

Local media are in particular targeting former UBS Chairman Marcel Ospel, who was forced to quit earlier this year but has nonetheless received millions of Swiss francs in bonuses.

"I appeal to the individual responsibility of those who have received such bonuses," Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said in his first press conference since returning to his post after a heart attack in late September.

Asked about Ospel, Merz said it was up to management to "draw the relevant consequences" but added: "Legally it will be difficult to get the bonuses back."

Swiss paper Sonntagsblick reported on Sunday that UBS management, including current Chairman Peter Kurer, would not get a bonus this year.

But the bank has raised the base salary of a small number of its best client advisers as part of the usual annual review, a UBS spokesman said in a reaction to a report in Sunday paper Sonntagszeitung.

Merz said that for large banks such as UBS there were areas like wealth management that had worked very well and it would be difficult to retrospectively dispute the bonuses of successful people.

(Writing by Lisa Jucca; Editing by David Holmes)