The logo of the Swiss bank UBS, August 31, 2023 in Zurich (AFP/Fabrice COFFRINI)
Swiss citizens want to launch a popular vote for a partial nationalization of large systemic banks like UBS, after the latter agreed in March under pressure from the authorities to buy Credit Suisse in order to avoid bankruptcy.
The project, called “BANKENINITIATIVE” (Banking Initiative), was reported on Sunday by the weekly Sonntagszeitung. The Federal Chancellery must first carry out a preliminary examination of the text before citizens embark on the signature collection phase.
In Switzerland, for a text to be submitted to a popular vote, 100,000 signatures are necessary within 18 months.
On its website, the group of citizens who wish to launch the popular vote indicate that they want to learn “the lessons of the banking crises” that affected UBS in 2008 and Credit Suisse in 2023 and better protect taxpayers as well as state finances.
“Our banking initiative does not aim to nationalize the financial center, but rather to create a sustainable balance in the financial center thanks to a mixed economy model for large systemically important banks”, such as UBS, they indicate. .
After agreeing to urgently buy Credit Suisse for only 3 billion Swiss francs, UBS finally announced in mid-August that it could do without state aid, which was intended to protect it against bad surprises in the accounts of her ex-rival.
The citizens’ group believes that UBS is not only a large systemically important bank, but has “de facto become a state bank”, believing that it has become too big to let it go under in a crisis and that the bank only faced the takeover of Credit Suisse thanks to state guarantees worth several billions.
Their initiative calls for these banking giants to be “managed as mixed economy companies, with the Confederation being the majority shareholder with regard to the share capital”.
The text also provides that Parliament guarantees through “preventive measures” that large banks cannot transfer their legal headquarters abroad.
The man behind this project, Bernhard Schmidt, is, according to the Swiss press agency ATS-Keystone, without political affiliation and runs a private school.
© 2023 AFP
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