(Boursier.com) — Swiss credit loses more than 5.5% on Tuesday and is moving to a historic low in Zurich. A new ‘case’ hangs over the Swiss bank: the Swiss financial market regulator is trying to find out if recent comments from representatives of the bank, including the president, Axel Lehmann, were ‘misleading’.
According to information disclosed last night by ‘Reuters’, Finma is seeking to establish to what extent the manager and others at Credit Suisse were aware that customers were continuing to withdraw funds from the bank when he said, in two separate interviews, that the outings had ceased. In an interview with ‘Bloomberg TV’ on December 2, A. Lehmann claimed that outflows “have practically stopped” after revealing on November 23 the loss of 84 billion francs in client assets. On December 1, the CS president told the ‘Financial Times’ that after strong outflows in October, these had “fundamentally stopped” and “partially reversed”.
These remarks were made before the close of a crucial $4 billion fundraising round and helped end the stock’s haemorrhage: on December 2, the stock rebounded more than 9%. According to agency sources, A. Lehmann may not have been briefed properly before making these comments.
When CS’s annual results were released on February 9, management clarified that customers withdrew 110.5 billion Swiss francs from the bank in the last three months of 2022. In response to a question about the breakdown of withdrawals during the period, chief executive Ulrich Koerner told analysts that day that more than 85% of outflows in the last quarter took place in October and November. Up to 17 MdsF were thus able to be withdrawn from the establishment in December, after the declarations of its president.
“Was Axel Lehmann insufficiently informed or did he consciously or deliberately conceal the question?”, Says analyst Daniel Bosshard. “Be that as it may, this is yet another inglorious chapter in the history of Credit Suisse.” “We believe that Finma would not seek to further destabilize the bank by pursuing it aggressively,” said Adam Terelak, equity analyst at Mediobanca, to ‘Bloomberg’. “It just adds another headache to the bank which is struggling to stabilize after record outflows from its customers.”
Responding to a request for comment from ‘Reuters’ on the Feb. 9 results, Finma said in a statement that while Credit Suisse’s liquidity buffers have had a stabilizing effect, the regulator is “watching banks very closely in many such situations”, referring to cash outflows, which “were indeed significant” in the fourth quarter.