Credit Suisse turned down takeover bids one year before collapse

Diamond claimed his group had proposed buying the investment banking segment of Credit Suisse in 2022. Keystone / Michael Buholzer

The management of Credit Suisse turned down takeover bids about a year before the bank collapsed. The bids were for the investment side of the bank, claims one of the people involved, American investment banker Bob Diamond, in the Sonntagszeitung.

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Diamond met Axel Lehmann, then chair of the Credit Suisse board of directors, in May 2022 at the bank’s head office. The proposal was to take over the entire investment banking business of Credit Suisse for around $5 billion (CHF4.4 billion). This segment, plagued by several scandals, would thus have been detached from the rest of the bank.

Credit Suisse would have retained a 25% stake, and the new owners would have provided clients with financial products. Another meeting took place in the summer, followed by another one in September 2022.

+ Credit Suisse collapse: lingering questions one year on

In the end, Credit Suisse’s response was negative. The reason given was that the bank was already too far advanced on other projects.

New attempts

In early 2023, further unsuccessful attempts were made to contact Credit Suisse. Three groups were reportedly involved: the Diamond group, which wanted the investment bank; another group, which wanted to take over retail banking and private banking; and a third, which wanted to buy asset management.

Diamond says he is convinced that Credit Suisse could have been saved in this way, and that Switzerland would have retained two large, credible banks. The retail banking segment was solid, private banking more or less so.

+ UBS has cut 10,000 jobs since Credit Suisse takeover in 2023

“If we had separated investment banking and asset management, we would have kept a smaller, healthier core that would have been much easier to manage and would have survived,” said Diamond. In the end, history decided otherwise. On March 19, 2023, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter publicly announced the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS.

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Translated from French with DeepL/gw

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