Banks Finance Minister gives UBS the cold shoulder
In an interview, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter reacted cautiously to UBS's proposal to limit the investment bank. Such a step would be a "business decision" for UBS, she told Bloomberg TV on Friday.
11.04.2025, 16:43
SDA
"This is not a political decision," said the President of the Swiss Confederation on the sidelines of the EU finance ministers' meeting in Warsaw. Keller-Sutter indicated that such a limit would not significantly change her opinion regarding future capital requirements.
"We have really learned our lessons from the collapse of Credit Suisse, and there have been many analyses of the causes of the failure," she said. "Of course it was mismanagement, but it was also a lack of capital - especially a lack of capital at the foreign subsidiary."
According to media reports, UBS management had proposed internally that a limit be placed on its investment bank in Switzerland by law. With this proposal, the big bank wants to counter the Federal Council's plans to increase the capital requirements for the country's largest financial institution by up to 25 billion US dollars. The aim of the authorities is to reduce the risk of UBS dragging down the Swiss economy in an existential crisis with a larger capital buffer.
The Federal Council intends to submit a proposal in June on how much capital UBS should hold in future. Parliament will then deal with the issue. The deliberations are not expected to be concluded until 2028 at the earliest.
