Swiss finance minister defends rushed banking takeover

SF Urban Properties AG

25/03/2023 13:17

ZURICH, March 25 (Reuters) - Switzerland's finance
minister defended the shotgun merger between the country's two
largest banks in an interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher
Zeitung on Saturday, saying the use of emergency law was
necessary to stabilise the situation.
    "Credit Suisse would not have survived Monday," Karin
Keller-Sutter said, explaining the need to find a swift solution
for Credit Suisse's woes. 
    "Without a solution, payment transactions with CS in
Switzerland would have been significantly disrupted, possibly
even collapsed, and wages and bills could no longer have been
paid," she said.
    Last Sunday it was announced that UBS  UBSG.S  had agreed to
buy its rival Credit Suisse  CSGN.S  for 3 billion Swiss francs
($3.23 billion) in stock and agreed to assume up to 5 billion
francs ($5.4 billion) in losses in a merger engineered by Swiss
authorities to prevent more market turmoil in global banking.
    Emergency law was used to enable the banks to reach a speedy
agreement. Shareholders, for example, who would normally get a
say in such a takeover were largely bypassed, which has angered
some of them. 
    Keller-Sutter said the Swiss government's executive Federal
Council "only went as far as was absolutely necessary to achieve
the goal of stabilisation".
    "If we had done nothing, CS shares would have been worthless
on Monday and the shareholders would have gone home
empty-handed," she said.

($1 = 0.9199 Swiss francs)

 (Reporting by Noele Illien
Editing by Giles Elgood)
 ((Noele.Illien@thomsonreuters.com; +41 41 528 39 73;))