Late last month, a landmark inquiry by the Swiss Parliamentary Investigation Committee (PInC) attributed Credit Suisse's collapse to "years of mismanagement" by its leadership.
"Responsibility for the loss of confidence in Credit Suisse and the difficulties that jeopardised its existence in March 2023 lies with its Board of Directors and Executive Board, who had defied numerous interventions by FINMA in the preceding years," the Committee said.
The report also criticizes the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) for granting the bank regulatory and supervisory relief in the years before its collapse. However, the Committee stopped short of directly blaming regulators, acknowledging that Swiss authorities prevented a global financial crisis by brokering Credit Suisse's sale to UBS in March 2023.
The report emphasizes the importance of learning from the collapse, given the size of UBS following its acquisition of Credit Suisse. "UBS, now Switzerland's only G-SIB, is many times larger relative to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) than other financial institutions are relative to their country's GDP," the Committee said. "The PInC considers it essential that this fact be given due consideration in the regulations." The report calls for "more effective provisions for systemically important banks" and criticized Switzerland's "too big to fail" laws for neglecting crucial market indicators.
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