It was the only viable solution, according to Alain Berset, the Swiss president. Tuesday, April 11, before the Parliament meeting in extraordinary session of three days, he came to defend the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS for 3 billion Swiss francs. Because a bankruptcy would have had “catastrophic consequences” for the country, the whole world and the reputation of the Swiss financial center, he insisted, explaining that the takeover of Credit Suisse by the first bank in the country was the solution ” most likely to restore market confidence.”
Before the Upper House of Parliament, he reviewed all the options that had been considered, such as nationalization, consolidation and bankruptcy. By removing them one by one. The deputies as well as the shareholders of the two banking giants had been presented with a fait accompli, after the express marriage of Credit Suisse and UBS, on March 19. But “time was running out” and the Federal Council sought “the best possible solution to avoid a financial crisis with incalculable consequences”, assured Alain Berset.
On the agenda of this extraordinary session: the guarantees granted to organize the rescue, the examination of “a possible legal action against the governing bodies of Credit Suisse” or even the regulation of banks considered as too big to let them fail.
The UDC, the radical right and the country’s leading party, demanded that regulations concerning banks that are too big to fail be tightened and that the government commit to holding Credit Suisse executives to account, but also to demanding the reimbursement of unjustified bonuses. The government had taken the lead in calming the anger by stripping the bank’s top executives of their 2022 and 2023 bonuses and bonuses.
While considering this takeover as the least bad solution, the Center (moderate right) asked to clarify the risks involved in creating a bank of this size. The Greens, for their part, want the Confederation to assess the advisability of bringing the leaders of Credit Suisse to justice to make them accountable.
During this session, parliamentarians will notably have to endorse the guarantees of the Confederation on the loans of the central bank, but this vote “has only a symbolic value”, insists Samuel Bendahan, socialist deputy and professor of economics at HEC. Lausanne. “Parliament cannot overturn the decision of the Federal Council [government]”, taken by invoking “emergency law”, he argues, and “the money has already been released anyway”. “Parliament can only give a signal that next time it won’t be like that,” said the deputy. However, he hopes that this session will make it possible “to vote on binding texts so that we do not find ourselves in this situation again in ten years”.
Alain Berset himself tried to temper. “Switzerland is shaken by this painful episode,” he acknowledged. But “the disappearance of Credit Suisse is not the disappearance of Switzerland, it is the disappearance of a bank, a large bank, but only of a bank. »
