Geneva  - There was some conservative optimism Monday that the uncertainty hanging over UBS AG could be resolved, following the filing of a motion to postpone a case in the United States against the troubled Swiss bank over its secret client data.

On Sunday, UBS and the US authorities, with the support of the Swiss government, jointly requested that Miami District Judge Alan Gold delay the start of the hearings until August to allow the sides to negotiate a settlement, thereby avoiding a trial altogether.

The judge was expected to give his response to the motion later in the day at the start of the closely-watched trial, focused on banking confidentiality and tax fraud issues.

UBS, the largest Swiss bank by assets, saw its stock price rise Monday on the Zurich exchange, though the volume of trade was lower than usual. In early afternoon trading, the stock was up 1.6 per cent at 12.82 francs.

Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, the head of research at Vontobel, a Swiss private bank, said the joint filing for a postponement of the trial was a "positive sign" showing that the sides to the dispute "may reach an out-of-court settlement."

Such a settlement, he noted, would likely have to find a legal way to disclose information without violating Swiss confidentiality laws.

The US Department of Justice said that any settlement reached would "necessarily" include a provision requiring UBS to provide data on a "significant number of individuals with UBS accounts."

The US has slapped UBS with a demand that it hand over data on about 52,000 US-tax-paying clients of the bank, after some of its employees helped wealthy clients evade paying their taxes.

The Swiss government has said it would seize the data, if the US court demanded its disclosure, to prevent any violations of the Alpine confederation's renowned banking confidentiality laws.

In February, one day after UBS admitted wrongdoing, handed over information on a reported 250 clients and agreed to pay 780 million dollars in fines, the US launched the new demand for more data.

Switzerland is in the process of renegotiating its double-taxation agreements with various governments, including the US, in order to get off the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) so called "grey list" of countries without sufficient disclosure.

UBS is also coming out of a 2008 which saw record losses for the company as it had to take more write-downs on bad investments abroad, particularly from the sub-prime market collapse, and the financial crisis than any other bank in Europe.

It received a bailout from the Swiss government and transferred so-called toxic assets to the central bank.(dpa)