The News
UBS is weighing its options after the Swiss government said it would need to raise $27 billion in fresh capital to support its US operations. The bank’s executive chair, Colm Kelleher, has called the ruling “extreme” and said it unfairly punishes the bank for stepping in — at Zurich’s request — to rescue Credit Suisse in 2023.
The shotgun marriage left just one major bank in the country, and regulators are determined to safeguard it. In the government’s view, UBS’s American business, which manages $2.1 trillion for wealthy clients and lends them money, is a potential risk, and regulators want the bank to increase its ability to absorb steep losses there.
“If you step in to do the right thing, which in our case was bailing out Credit Suisse and stabilizing the system, what you can’t have is post-hoc penalties over and above what was agreed at the time,” UBS chair Colm Kelleher said late last year.
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Liz’s view
It’s a reminder that bank rescues — even ones as financially attractive as Credit Suisse — are messy and have long tails, something Jamie Dimon learned after 2008 to his lasting regret. He said in 2015 that JPMorgan “would not do something like Bear Stearns again” after paying billions of dollars in penalties for the failed bank’s prior sins.
UBS has a few options. It could force a referendum — its 35,000 Swiss employees are near the 50,000 required to put the law to a national vote — but would probably lose. (Bankers aren’t very popular, even in millionaire-friendly Switzerland.) It could countersue the government (good luck). It could bite the bullet and raise capital (ouch), or pull back from the US in hopes of getting a break.
More compelling would be some kind of transaction: Morgan Stanley has long coveted UBS’s wealth management business, and Kelleher, who was Morgan Stanley’s longtime No. 2 executive, orchestrated a deal to buy it in 2008 that fell apart as the financial crisis unfolded. I suspect the bank’s new CEO, Ted Pick, would jump at the chance to become the largest wealth manager in the world, and pick up billionaire clients in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Notable
- The Swiss National Bank said it supported the measures from the government as they will “significantly strengthen” UBS’ resilience.