Swiss Bank Drags Down Big Lenders As Fears Spread To Europe

Shares in the globally connected Swiss bank Credit Suisse plunged Wednesday and dragged down other major European lenders as fears about deeper problems in the world banking system spread in the wake of bank failures in the United States.

At one point, Credit Suisse shares lost more than a quarter of their value, hitting a record low after the bank's biggest shareholder — the Saudi National Bank — told news outlets that it would not inject more money into the bank, which was beset by problems long before the U.S. banks collapsed.

The turmoil prompted an automatic pause in trading of Credit Suisse shares on the Swiss market and sent shares of other European banks tumbling, some by double digits. That fanned new fears about the health of financial institutions following the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the US.

Speaking Wednesday at a financial conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann defended the bank, saying, “We already took the medicine” to reduce risks. When asked if he would rule out government assistance in the future, he said: “That's not a topic. ... We are regulated. We have strong capital ratios, very strong balance sheet. We are all hands on deck, so that's not a topic whatsoever.”

A day earlier, Credit Suisse reported that managers had identified “material weaknesses” in the bank's internal controls on financial reporting as of the end of last year. That fanned new doubts about the bank's ability to weather the storm. Credit Suisse stock dropped about 30 per cent, to about 1.6 Swiss francs ($1.73), before clawing back to a 24 per cent loss at 1.70 francs ($1.83) in late afternoon trading on the SIX stock exchange. At its lowest, the price was down more than 85 per cent from February 2021. The stock has suffered a long, sustained decline: In 2007, the bank's shares traded at more than 80 francs ($86.71) each.

With concerns about the possibility of more hidden trouble in the banking system, investors were quick to sell bank stocks on bad news. France's Societe Generale SA dropped 12 per cent at one point. France's BNP Paribas fell more than 10 per cent. Germany's Deutsche Bank was down 8 per cent, and Britain's Barclays Bank was down nearly 8 per cent. Trading in the two French banks was briefly suspended.

The STOXX Banks index of 21 leading European lenders sagged 8.4 per cent following relative calm in the markets Tuesday. The turbulence came a day ahead of a meeting by the European Central Bank. President Christine Lagarde said last week, before the U.S. failures, that the bank would “very likely” increase its benchmark rates by a half percentage point to press its fight against inflation. Markets were watching closely to see if the bank carries through despite the latest turmoil.

Credit Suisse is “a much bigger concern for the global economy” than the midsize U.S. banks that collapsed, said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist for Capital Economics. It has multiple subsidiaries outside Switzerland and handles trading for hedge funds. “Credit Suisse is not just a Swiss problem but a global one,” he said. He noted, however, that the Swiss bank's “problems were well known so do not come as a complete shock to either investors or policymakers.”

The troubles "once more raise the question about whether this is the beginning of a global crisis or just another idiosyncratic' case,” Kenningham said in a research note. ”Credit Suisse was widely seen as the weakest link among Europe's large banks, but it is not the only bank which has struggled with weak profitability in recent years.”The Swiss National Bank declined to comment. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority did not immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Investors responded to “a broader structural problem" in banking following a long period of low interest rates and "very, very loose monetary policy,” said Sascha Steffen, professor of finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. In order to earn some yield, banks "needed to take more risks, and some banks did this more prudently than others."

Now investors are worried that banks "have risks on their balance sheet that they don't know about and therefore have accumulated significant losses that haven't been yet realized.” European finance ministers said this week that their banking system has no direct exposure to the U.S. bank failures.

Europe strengthened its banking safeguards after the global financial crisis that followed the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, analysts said, by transferring supervision of the biggest banks to the European Central Bank. The central bank is considered less likely than national supervisors to look the other way at developing problems.

The Credit Suisse parent bank is not part of EU supervision but it has entities in several European countries that are. Credit Suisse is subject to international rules requiring it to maintain financial buffers against losses as one of 30 so-called globally systemically important banks, or G-SIBs.

Following an announcement in October, Saudi National Bank invested some 1.5 billion Swiss francs to acquire a holding in Credit Suisse of just under 10 per cent. Share prices plunged after Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy told Bloomberg and Reuters that the bank has ruled out further investments in Credit Suisse to avoid regulations that kick in with a stake above 10 per cent.

The Swiss bank was pushing to raise money from investors and roll out a new strategy to overcome an array of troubles, including bad bets on hedge funds, repeated shake-ups of its top management and a spying scandal involving Zurich rival UBS.

In an annual report released Tuesday, Credit Suisse said customer deposits fell 41 per cent, or by 159.6 billion francs ($172.1 billion), at the end of last year compared with a year earlier.