Banks are designed to fail. And so they do. Governments want them to be both safe places for the public to keep their money and profit-seeking takers of risk. They are at one and the same time regulated utilities and risk-taking enterprises. The incentives for management incline them towards risk-taking, just as the incentives for
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Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will place their growing economic ties at the heart of talks in the Kremlin on Tuesday, highlighting Moscow’s dependence on Beijing after its economy was largely severed from the west. The Russian president hailed China’s economic model as “much more effective” than that of other countries, a recognition of the
A senior EU policymaker has pledged not to wrongfoot investors by upending bank creditor hierarchies, after market uproar at Switzerland’s decision to favour shareholders over bondholders in the rescue-takeover of Credit Suisse. Dominique Laboureix, the chair of the Single Resolution Board, the body in charge of shutting down failed banks, said fears that additional tier
Shares in First Republic tumbled again on Monday after its credit rating was cut for the second time in the space of a week, a decision that came following depositors pulling tens of billions of dollars from their accounts. The bank’s shares, which have fallen more than 80 per cent in March, were down 30
Jeremy Hunt, chancellor, was on Monday night urged by the opposition Labour party to tell MPs what he is doing in conjunction with the Bank of England to ensure the stability of the British banking system. Tulip Siddiq, shadow City minister, wrote to Hunt saying he had a duty to the public and the UK
The emergency call from the Swiss establishment came at 4pm on Thursday. Colm Kelleher, a rambunctious Irish banking executive who has been chair of UBS since last April, had been planning to celebrate St Patrick’s Day on Friday before watching Ireland play England at rugby on Saturday at a pub in Zurich. He was hoping
Having spent the first decade of my career working in a bank and then becoming a top-rated bank analyst*, I find that people often express surprise that I never invest in bank shares. But I think it is precisely because I understand banks that I never invest in their shares. Recent events surrounding the collapse of
To paraphrase the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, most banks are global in life but national in death. This is certainly true for Credit Suisse. After a weekend of intense negotiations, Swiss authorities brokered an emergency deal to sell the troubled 167-year-old institution to its more successful Swiss rival, UBS. A SFr50bn ($54bn)
The Swiss government has come under fire from bondholders and international regulators for its handling of the $3.2bn rescue-takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS. The two banks were forced together over the weekend by Swiss officials in a shotgun marriage that stabilised the teetering Credit Suisse but wiped out $17bn of its bonds, upending the
For most people in Switzerland, the news that Credit Suisse was to be saved from collapse by local rival UBS was met with stunned disbelief. Even the financially tuned denizens of Paradeplatz, Zurich’s banking centre, had happily gone into the weekend with no clue that the lender — regarded as a national institution — was
Federal regulators have extended the bidding period for Silicon Valley Bank, the California lender whose collapse earlier this month sparked a broader banking crisis, while also expanding the pool of institutions they are willing to accept as potential buyers of assets and deposits. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said on Monday it would accept separate
The UK regulatory pendulum has been halted in mid-swing. The direction of travel for bank regulation in recent years has clearly been in the financial services sector’s favour. Aided by a government eager to find benefits of post-Brexit regulatory freedom, there has been a sense of opportunity to tweak or modify, to strip off gold-plating
The sale of Credit Suisse to UBS is the most dramatic moment in global banking since the financial crisis of 2008-09. It has also thrust into the spotlight the reforms that the global financial system has undergone in the past 15 years. Since the last crisis, regulators have sought to transfer more of the risk
Credit Suisse has told staff that it will continue to hand out bonuses and pay rises as planned this year, despite the bank having to be rescued by UBS in a SFr3bn ($3.25bn) deal over the weekend. Shortly after the Swiss lender was saved from bankruptcy on Sunday night, chair Axel Lehmann and chief executive
Bond investors woke up with a big problem on Monday. Sunday’s emergency takeover of struggling Swiss bank Credit Suisse by its rival UBS deepened a rout in AT1 bonds. These instruments are designed to be wiped out when an issuing bank hits financial trouble, reducing its debts. Swiss regulators obliterated about $17bn of Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse bondholders were in uproar on Monday and the European Central Bank raised concerns after the rescue deal by rival UBS wiped out $17bn of the failed Swiss bank’s bonds, upending debt recovery norms and undermining financial market confidence. “In my eyes, this is against the law,” said Patrik Kauffman, a fund manager at
“They’ve changed the law and they have basically stolen $16bn of bonds,” Davide Serra, founder and CEO of Algebris Investments, told investors on a call this morning. “This has been a big policy mistake, [and] they will regret it. [ . . . ] Switzerland will be the new pariah in this [loss-absorbing bond market]. They asked for it,
The Bank of Delight, which operates three branches in a sparsely populated patch of western Arkansas, does not qualify as a systemically important financial institution, but it holds a place of special importance for people who live nearby. Funded overwhelmingly by local deposits, Delight is a crucial lender to loggers and livestock farmers in a
Good morning. Credit Suisse is well on its way to becoming a UBS subsidiary, and this is good news for markets. Our colleagues at Due Diligence have the blow-by-blow. Less good is the fact that, to clinch a deal, regulators ordered Credit Suisse to zero out some junior bondholders, even as shareholders get about 80
Banking is a massive, complicated and delicate confidence trick. Normally it works fine. But as soon as people worry that it could fall apart, it often does, sometimes spectacularly. So when an old friend, an entrepreneur in Geneva, messaged me last week to say he had moved his money out of Credit Suisse, having already
The writer is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an adviser to Allianz and Gramercy Many commentators have rushed to embrace the view that Federal Reserve policy is now in a new world following the sudden failure of three US banks and the deployment of “bazooka measures” to safeguard the financial system. But in reality,