A purchase of Credit Suisse by UBS would be the most important bank merger in Europe since the financial crisis. The “Financial Times” reported that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the financial regulator Finma had informed their international colleagues that they saw a merger with UBS as the only way to stop the loss of confidence in CS. Credit Suisse is the largest money house that got caught up in the collapsed US institutes Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, although it had hardly anything in the fire at SVB itself. Most recently, CS had to draw on emergency loans from the SNB of up to CHF 50 billion. It is the first time since the 2007 financial crisis that a central bank has felt compelled to support such a large bank.
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This intervention temporarily calmed the situation, but was apparently not enough to break the downward spiral. It’s not just the flight of private customers from Zurich-based Credit Suisse that is affecting it – business with other financial institutions is also becoming increasingly difficult.