ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland’s financial market regulator has ordered an audit into Credit Suisse’s handling of the events that led to its collapse in 2023, when it was taken over by old rival UBS, the SonntagsZeitung newspaper reported on Sunday.
According to the newspaper, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) is looking into the 15 months leading up to the state-organized merger in March last year, and said it had interviewed nearly a dozen current or former employees of the two banks.
The newspaper reported that the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority commissioned the law firm Wenger Plattner to conduct the interviews, in order to conduct a review of the crisis management at Credit Suisse.
The appointment came after what the newspaper described as a “secret” order from the Financial Market Supervisory Authority in September 2023 telling banks it wanted to review Credit Suisse’s handling of the crisis. Interviews with employees could show whether authorities were misled by Credit Suisse’s management at the time, the newspaper said.
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, the Swiss finance ministry and the Swiss National Bank did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Wenger Plattner and UBS declined to comment.
The newspaper said the investigation includes questions such as when it became clear that Credit Suisse could no longer be saved, what the bank’s liquidity was, what its equity looked like, and what its management was like in general.
In a report in December, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said Credit Suisse was on the verge of collapse months before it took over, and called for stronger powers to supervise banks.
A Swiss parliamentary committee investigating how authorities handled the collapse of Credit Suisse is expected to submit its report later this year.
In April, Swiss authorities outlined a package of measures — including tougher capital requirements for UBS — aimed at preventing a repeat of the Credit Suisse collapse.
Parliament is expected to discuss these proposals after the publication of the parliamentary report.
Critics of the Credit Suisse takeover argue that the Swiss authorities could have kept the bank going as a separate company, but were slow to act and should have provided greater guarantees for the bank’s survival.
The authorities defended their actions, pointing to failures at Credit Suisse as the cause of the collapse.