Switzerland

Swiss inflation eased to its lowest level in nearly two and a half years in January, official data showed on Tuesday, feeding expectations that the Swiss National Bank could cut interest rates in March, Reuters reported. Consumer prices rose by 1.3% in January compared with the same month last year, the lowest annual increase since October 2021, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office.

UBS Group AG has moved away from Credit Suisse’s original plan to sell its $250 million distressed-debt business to a single bidder after it failed to attract enough interest, and is instead planning to dispose of the assets individually, Bloomberg News reported. The sale was called off late last year because bids were scarce and too low, according to people familiar with the matter. The assets have been added to UBS’s special wind-down unit for Credit Suisse and are being sold on an individual basis, said the people, who asked not to be named as the details are private.

The Swiss central bank won’t pay out any dividend for 2023 after a second straight year of losses, having twice hiked interest rates to combat inflation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Swiss National Bank’s provisional net loss of around 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.5 billion) was down to a loss on its Swiss franc positions, totaling around 8.5 billion Swiss francs, it said Tuesday. The bank conversely made a profit on its foreign-currency positions and gold holdings.

Britain and Switzerland signed a wide-ranging financial services deal on Thursday granting reciprocal market access for their banks, insurers, asset managers and stock exchanges to boost trade and cut compliance costs, Reuters reported. After two years of talks which began after Britain left the European Union, the deal - which will require British and Swiss parliamentary approval - is based on mutual recognition of rules and supervisors, easing regulatory burdens.

Credit Suisse came close to imploding months before its eventual rescue, the Swiss financial regulator said on Tuesday in its first detailed account of the crisis, as it argued for stronger powers to oversee lenders in future, Reuters reported. The regulator, FINMA, which has come under fire for its supervision of the bank, defended its role in the meltdown which eventually triggered the biggest rescue of a bank since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

SBI Holdings Inc., Rakuten Group Inc. and Monex Group Inc. are among brokerages in Japan that also sold Credit Suisse’s riskiest bonds to retail investors, highlighting the widening fallout of these products in the country, Bloomberg News reported. The operators of the nation’s three major online brokerages offered the Swiss lender’s Additional Tier 1 notes for a minimum purchase amount of $200,000, according to copies of the firms’ product explanatory materials seen by Bloomberg News.

Airline SAS AB is set to complete its US Chapter 11 process by June following expected regulatory approvals in Europe, according to Chief Executive Officer Anko van der Werff, Bloomberg News reported. That means the process is going according to plan, the CEO said in an interview on Thursday after posting fourth-quarter earnings that saw its adjusted pretax loss widen 30% year-on-year. The Scandinavian carrier filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022, and in October reached a $1.2 billion refinancing deal with a group of investors including Air France-KLM and Castlelake.

Everyone has been looking for evidence of the pain in commercial property hitting banks. Behold, Switzerland's Julius Baer. The private bank Monday said it was reviewing its business of lending to rich clients after it took a hit on a 606 million Swiss franc ($680 million) exposure to a set of loans backed by a single client's commercial real estate and luxury retail holdings, the Wall Street Journal reported. It didn't name the client, but a person familiar with matter said the loans are backed by Rene Benko's troubled Austrian property group, Signa.

UBS is facing scrutiny from Finma, Switzerland’s chief financial regulator, as it integrates with Credit Suisse following the merger of the two global banks this year, the regulator said, adding that it will appoint outside monitors to oversee the process, the Wall Street Journal reported. The risks of cyberattacks, information-technology disruptions and fraud have significantly increased during the integration of UBS and Credit Suisse, Finma said Thursday in an annual risk outlook report.

Switzerland wanted its big banks to be fortresses. In practice, the country’s “too big to fail” banking laws made a sand castle of Credit Suisse, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Swiss rules in question have become an object lesson in the difficulties of designing financial regulation. Created to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis bailouts, Switzerland’s customized version of international capital requirements laid the groundwork for the biggest bank rescue since.