Status: 04/11/2023 7:29 p.m
After the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse, Swiss MPs voiced harsh criticism of their leadership in a special parliamentary session. They demanded consequences from the debacle surrounding the major bank that had gotten into trouble.
According to Swiss President Alain Berset, the management of the major Swiss bank Credit Suisse, which was rescued by emergency law, has destroyed confidence in the bank itself. The top managers had learned nothing from the financial crisis, he said at the start of a three-day special session of the two chambers of parliament to mark the end of the traditional bank.
The bank managers had succumbed to the greed for more profit and had hidden risks, explained Peter Hegglin from the party Die Mitte. “They have ruined a proud CS over the years and have regularly been paid very high wages and bonuses.”
Swiss President Berset accused Credit Suisse of not having learned anything from the financial crisis.
Image: dpa
Government facilitated controversial bank bailout
In mid-March, the Swiss government enabled arch-rival UBS to take over Credit Suisse in order to save the country’s second-largest bank, which was on the verge of insolvency. To this end, the government suspended several laws in order to grant liquidity support of up to CHF 259 billion (EUR 262.7 billion) together with the Swiss National Bank.
This included government guarantees totaling 109 billion Swiss francs (110.4 billion euros). These have now been formally approved in the parliamentary session. In fact, however, they had already been made beforehand and could no longer be undone.
consequences demanded
The social democrat Eva Herzog also criticized the bank managers. “The financial crisis of 2008 apparently wasn’t enough to wipe out the type of banker we gleefully watched go down with Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.'” She and other MPs called for the legal scope for liability claims and claims for damages to be exhausted.
The right-wing SVP demanded new rules so that companies can go bankrupt “without dragging Switzerland or the whole world into the abyss”. The Social Democrats also called for new banking regulations, since the “too big to fail” rules intended to prevent government bailouts have not worked. The Greens called for sustainability criteria to be introduced for state guarantees.
However, most MPs conceded that the government had to step in to prevent catastrophic consequences for the Swiss economy and possibly another global financial crisis.
Credit Suisse has now repaid part of the SNB liquidity assistance loan, said Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter. She explained that Switzerland had to decide what kind of financial center it wanted to have in the future. Certain risks would have to be accepted if the country wanted to keep up in international location competition.