Switzerland followed the lead of other European countries and the United States on Thursday by announcing it would support its banking system with billions of dollars.

The main recipient will be UBS AG, which is being offered up to 54 billion Swiss francs ($56.17 billion Cdn) so that it can part with securities that have gone bad since the start of the worldwide financial crisis.

Switzerland's largest bank, which racked up losses and writedowns totalling about 45 billion francs ($46.8 billion Cdn) over the past year, will also receive six billion francs ($6.24 billion Cdn) from the government in return for mandatory convertible bonds.

The government said the support package would also include raising account holder protection for customers of all Swiss banks above the current threshold of 30,000 francs ($31,200 Cdn).

UBS rival Credit Suisse said it had also been offered government assistance but would not make use of it at this time, choosing instead to raise about 10 billion francs ($10.4 billion Cdn) on the open market. The largest amount would come from the Qatar Investment Authority, a government-controlled fund, it said.

While Switzerland's No. 2 bank has been less affected by the global financial turmoil, it said it expected to report losses of 1.3 billion Swiss francs ($1.35 billion Cdn) for the third quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, UBS said it expected to report a profit of almost 300 million francs ($312 million Cdn) for the period — its first since the second quarter of 2007.