The birth of the new banking giant born from the purchase of Credit Suisse by UBS is having problems right from birth. The General Prosecutor’s Office announced this Sunday the opening of an investigation into the operation to verify that the relevant legislation has been complied with.
“The Prosecutor’s Office wants to proactively fulfill its mission and responsibility to contribute to the cleanup of the Swiss financial center and has established a supervisory mechanism in this regard to take immediate action in any situation that is within its field of activity,” he said. explained the institution, in a note advanced by the Financial Times.
The magistracy considers that the operation includes “numerous aspects that need to be investigated” to identify any crime that may fall within its powers”, but did not specify what they could be. They were the ones that accused the regulatory authorities of not having taken into account the repercussions on competition in the banking sector.
UBS acquired Credit Suisse on March 19 after a negotiation supported by the Swiss State and estimated at 3,000 million Swiss francs (3,020 million euros). The operation drew objections from lawmakers across the Swiss political spectrum, who criticized the government for using its emergency powers to extend taxpayer-backed financial guarantees to UBS and silence potential shareholder opposition.
But the problems for the new banking giant UBS-Credit Suisse do not end there. The new UBS plans to reduce its workforce by 20-30%, cutting up to 36,000 jobs worldwide, the SonntagsZeitung reported today, citing a senior UBS manager.
In Switzerland, 11,000 employees will be laid off, according to the Swiss newspaper. At the end of 2022, the two entities jointly employed almost 125,000 people, of whom about 30% worked in Switzerland. If the adjustment is confirmed, that number of expected layoffs dwarfs the 9,000 job cuts that Credit Suisse announced before its bailout by UBS last month.
This Wednesday UBS will inaugurate a new CEO, the Swiss Sergio Ermotti, who led the entity for a decade before moving to the reinsurer Swiss Re. Even then, when he took office in 2011, Ermotti’s pulse did not tremble when to lay off thousands of UBS workers from the investment banking sector.
