Credit Suisse Group AG is considering centralising the management of its bankers to the world's wealthy, reversing a regional structure put in place six years ago, as the scandal-plagued Swiss bank looks for ways to tighten controls and improve operations, Reuters reported. The bank’s wealth management business is split, residing in three separate divisions -- the international business, Swiss business and a separate Asia-Pacific unit. Some executives felt that separation had not worked well and combining the businesses into one group would offer benefits, one of the sources said.
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Switzerland
In mid-March, shares in ViacomCBS Inc. and Discovery Inc. rocketed skyward. That was great news for Bill Hwang. His firm, Archegos Capital Management, had borrowed billions from Credit Suisse Group AG to make wagers on a handful of stocks, including the entertainment companies, according to a Wall Street Journal reported. As is standard practice, Archegos had handed over cash to Credit Suisse to secure its bets. With the stocks more than doubling since the start of the year, Archegos asked for some of that money back, and it was credited.
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The battering to Wall Street banks from Archegos Capital Management topped $10 billion after UBS Group AG and Nomura Holdings Inc. reported fresh hits caused by the fund’s collapse, the Wall Street Journal reported. UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank by assets, said it lost $774 million following Archegos’s implosion, a bigger hit than analysts expected, deepening the damage caused by the fund. Meantime, Japan’s Nomura, which flagged losses of around $2 billion last month, upped its total damage tally to $2.85 billion.
Switzerland’s top financial regulator said the collapse of Archegos Capital Management LP will have consequences for how banks deal with risk as one of the country’s biggest lenders counts its losses from exposure to the investment firm, Bloomberg News reported. “This will be meticulously examined and there will be lessons, maybe for regulators, maybe for the banks who were involved, maybe for supervisors,” Mark Branson, the head of Swiss regulator Finma, said Wednesday in Berlin.
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Credit Suisse has made further progress in winding down funds connected with Greensill Capital and is able to distribute another $1.7 billion to investors, the bank said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. This takes the total distribution so far to $4.8 billion, the bank said, following an earlier payout of $3.1 billion. The bank said it has so far collected $2 billion from receivables redeemed when the four supply chain finance funds (SCFFs) were suspended on March 1.
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When Credit Suisse Group AG announced a $4.7 billion hit from the Archegos Capital Management meltdown, there was a silver lining: The rest of its investment bank did so well in the quarter, the overall pretax loss would only be $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The situation exposes the bank’s dilemma. Its investment bank, which takes on more risk, has been its profit engine, making up for its larger, slower-growing wealth-management business.
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The head of Switzerland’s financial regulator FINMA questioned Credit Suisse over risks in its dealings with now-insolvent finance firm Greensill Capital “months” before the bank was forced to close $10 billion of funds liked to Greensill, Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported Sunday, according to Reuters.
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Credit Suisse Group AG’s double-barreled financial crisis shares a common theme: a bank that looked the other way when warning signs argued for pulling back on lucrative corners of its business, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Swiss bank with a big Wall Street presence was caught off guard starting in late February when $10 billion in complicated investment funds it ran with financing firm Greensill Capital unraveled, despite years of internal warnings about the relationship.
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Two former Societe Generale SA bankers are challenging Swiss fines issued for failing to report suspicious deposits worth more than $700 million made by a one-time ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bloomberg News reported. The former head of SocGen’s Swiss private bank and the ex-head of compliance, who can only be named as L. and K. under Swiss reporting restrictions, are appealing fines totaling 90,000 swiss francs ($96,000) at a trial starting Wednesday in Bellinzona.
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Credit Suisse said today that it will take a 4.4 billion Swiss franc ($4.7 billion) hit from dealings with Archegos Capital Management, prompting it to overhaul the leadership of its investment bank and risk divisions. The scandal-hit bank now expects to post a loss for the first quarter of around 900 million Swiss francs. It is also suspending its share buyback plans and cutting its dividend by two thirds. Switzerland’s No.