Switzerland's largest bank has warned that a global economic recovery will take much longer, and occur at a much slower pace, than many investors expect.

It comes at a time when market focus is largely attuned to global trade developments, amid conflicting signals over the extent of progress in trade talks between the world's two largest economies.

"We are running at very, very low global growth levels," Arend Kapteyn, global head of economics and strategy research at UBS, told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche on Wednesday.

Speaking at the UBS European Conference in London, Kapteyn said that global growth levels were tracking at about 2.6% on an annualized basis at present and the outlook "doesn't get better for the next three quarters."

"Actually, we are going to hit a bit of an air pocket in the first half of next year because we are still actually seeing these existing tariffs feeding their way into the data."