ZURICH: Credit Suisse should soon repay the emergency liquidity that the Swiss government gave the stricken bank to aid its rescue, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said in an interview published on Friday.
The country’s second biggest lender was given access to 200 billion Swiss francs - half of which was covered by government guarantees - as part of its state orchestrated rescue in March.
The bank has already paid back some of the 170 billion francs of loans, which included 100 billion francs in liquidity support from the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
“I cannot answer about the part of the liquidity support that came from the SNB without a federal guarantee,” Keller Sutter told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.
“The liquidity assistance secured by federal guarantees currently amounts to 5 billion francs. I believe that that should be fully repaid soon.” The government had also made a profit of a bit more than 100 million francs from its support, Keller Sutter said, citing the commitment premium and from the risk premiums attached to the loans.
The minister welcomed an upcoming parliamentary investigation into Credit Suisse’s collapse, saying it should have a broad mandate to look into the long-term causes of the bank’s problems. She also said there would be a shake-up of financial regulation and oversight in Switzerland. “Nothing will not happen.
I can already take a position on one point: the financial market supervisory authority, FINMA, certainly needs to be strengthened,“ she said.
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“For example, through the authority to impose fines or even a senior management system, which is already in place in the Anglo-Saxon world. Today, it is legally almost impossible to hold anyone accountable for gross failure.”
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