Bern - The Swiss National Bank said Wednesday that its losses for 2008 stood at 4.7 billion Swiss francs (3.97 billion dollars).

Meanwhile, the stabilisation fund set up for illiquid assets from UBS showed a loss of 1.69 billion dollars for the year, about 50 million more than the equity contribution from the embattled banking giant.

However, the national bank said it had a secondary protection in the form of 100 million UBS shares and therefore "the stabilisation fund's financial situation has no impact on the SNB's annual result for 2008."

The bank attributed its own losses largely to volatile gold and foreign exchange markets in the last year.

A large amount of the foreign exchange losses were taken as part of the attempt to stabilize the financial markets, the central bank said. The bank also issued bonds. In all, the measures to shore up markets substantially lengthened its balance sheet.

A year earlier the bank had earned 8 billion francs, largely off gold sales and currency investments. (dpa)