Singapore will not overtake Swiss financial centre, says Swiss Bankers Association president

'Swiss banks well positioned, Singapore will not overtake us' Keystone-SDA

The Swiss financial centre is still well-positioned, despite the collapse of Credit Suisse, said the president of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) Marcel Rohner.

“One cannot speak of a loss of importance,” said the 61-year-old in an interview published today by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Singapore and Hong Kong were acknowledged as major competitors, “but they will not overtake us”, the former CEO of UBS (2007-2009) is convinced.

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In his view, Switzerland still has certain advantages. These include legal certainty, stability and neutrality, as well as strong geographical diversification in cross-border asset management.

“Neither Hong Kong nor Singapore will ever be able to offer all this to the same extent as Switzerland,” said Rohner.

Swiss banks have done well in recent years, “with one exception”, continued Rohner. In this regard, he once again reiterated his disagreement with the regulatory changes planned for UBS after the collapse of Credit Suisse.

“If the package is implemented as proposed, we will have serious difficulties maintaining the international competitiveness of the financial centre,” he argued. It would in fact be “incredibly expensive and inefficient bureaucratic processes”.

The Swiss government also wants to expand the competences of Finma, the financial market supervisory authority.

“This is highly questionable from the point of view of the rule of law,” noted the SBA president. Rohner also warned against having too high expectations of Finma in an emergency case like Credit Suisse.

“There is no regulatory authority in the world that can prevent such a crisis: you can only create the framework conditions for it to become less likely,” he concluded.

Adapted from Italian by DeepL/ac

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