There’s been a lot to do about the latest banking crisis, and some people started panicking when it “spread” to one of the GSIB (global systemically important banks ?) namely Credit Suisse (est. 1859).
However, for those following financial news in Switzerland, that one has been a story of systemic mismanagement for years. There is an element of “get woke, go broke” there — when your senior players are more into their ‘nonbinary’ identities or whatever than managing the risk of the bank, you have a serious problem — but its troubles goes back to way before this fad started: it is more a symptom of the company having forgotten what it is all about, than a cause.
Yesterday, Credit Suisse was bought up by its archrival, UBS (itself the product of a 1998 merger between Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation) for a mere 3 billion Swiss francs (about the same in US$). “The Plain Bagel” has more on the background of the deal, and why it is different from the SVB collapse.
And with that, greetings on the vernal equinox/first day of spring!
Spin, strangeness, and charm 