UBS and Credit Suisse Merged

UBS and Credit Suisse: The Biggest Banking Merger in Europe:

👉 The fear of a crisis causes more damage than the crisis itself. Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-largest bank, has experienced a significant decline in its stock price, dropping 97% from its peak and hitting record lows.

👉  Despite multiple attempts to revive the bank, Credit Suisse continues to struggle due to years of mismanagement and scandals. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently raised concerns about the bank's accounting practices, causing a delay in the release of its 2022 annual report.

👉 This weekend, the boards of UBS and Credit Suisse met separately to discuss what would be Europe’s most historic banking merger since the 2008 financial crisis. Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank by assets, has been facing a lot of issues.

👉 More recently, the bank has been contending with customer withdrawals, with Credit Suisse clients pulling out more than $121 billion in deposits over the last 3 months alone. Furthermore, investors have been looking for signs of contagion following the rapid collapse of SVB last week.

👉 In an attempt to bring back the confidence of people in the country’s banking sector, The Swiss National Bank had to give a $54B credit line to Credit Suisse. Despite this it didn't boost the confidence of people , so now as there is no option left UBS acquired its biggest rival Credit Suisse.

👉 UBS has around $1.1 trillion of total assets on its balance sheet and Credit Suisse has $575 billion, making the merger of these two one of the biggest global systemically important financial institutions in Europe.

👉 Credit Suisse shareholders were not given a chance to vote on the deal and will receive one share in UBS for every 22.48 shares they own. At the close of business on Friday, Credit Suisse was valued at around $8bn, but UBS bank acquired Credit Suisse at $3.15bn.

👉 However, there are a lot of risks too. In addition to regulatory challenges and merging complexities, a larger bank would create a massive concentration risk.