Swiss to Draft Stricter Leverage Rules for Big Banks This Year

(Bloomberg) — UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG should have larger buffers of capital against potential losses, Switzerland’s government said Wednesday after reviewing current rules for banks that are too big to fail.

The finance ministry will draft adjustments to the law governing banks that are a danger to the system if they collapse by the end of the year, the government said in a statement. It did not say how much higher the leverage ratio should be. A government-appointed expert panel recommended in December that “Switzerland should be among the countries with the highest standards internationally” for big banks.

One of the recommendations is to “increase the capital requirements and to continue to follow countries with the world’s highest requirements with regard to both risk-weighted capital and the unweighted leverage ratio,” the government said Wednesday.

The government’s proposals are part of a scheduled review of the too-big-to-fail regulation in Switzerland, which was first passed by the parliament in 2011. The rules, at the time the strictest in the world, sought to avoid another bailout of a big bank after UBS was propped up by the state in 2008.

Under the current rules, which are being phased in until 2019, the ratio of going-concern capital to assets must be at least 3.12 percent for UBS and Credit Suisse. Such capital can include common equity and contingent capital. This is “barely more” than the international minimum standard for all banks of 3 percent and less than what’s required in the U.S. and the U.K., the report in December said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeffrey Vögeli in Zurich at [e-mail]; Elena Logutenkova in Zurich at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elisa Martinuzzi at [e-mail] Heather Smith