The French asset management companies Lazard Frères Gestion and the American Pimco suffered losses of respectively 142 million euros and around 340 million dollars in the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS which caused the cancellation of certain debt securities.
The operation has in fact led to the cancellation of 17 billion dollars of so-called CoCo (for Contingent Convertible) debt securities, also called Additional Tier 1 or AT1, held by professional investors (banks, funds).
As of March 14, the start of the collapse and strong fears of bankruptcy of Credit Suisse, Lazard Frères Gestion held a total of 142 million euros of these securities, according to a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday by the company after initial information from press.
This represents only 0.4% of the total assets managed by the subsidiary of the Franco-American investment bank Lazard.
The American company Pimco, a subsidiary of the German insurer Allianz, for its part lost around 340 million dollars in this case, a source close to the company told AFP on Tuesday.
Pimco originally held Credit Suisse AT1 bonds which were worth $807 million when they were issued but their value had fallen in recent months, the source said.
This made it the biggest holder of Credit Suisse AT1 bonds according to data from financial news agency Bloomberg.
A small part, however, in the middle of the 1.740 billion dollars managed by Pimco.
Created after the financial crisis of 2008, this category of debt, which comes last in the order of priority for reimbursement in the event of financial difficulties, aimed to strengthen the level of solvency without issuing new shares, and thus to avoid that the taxpayer ends up footing the bill in the event of a bailout.
The daily Les Echos had advanced earlier in the day the amount of 107 million euros of AT1 securities held by Lazard Frères Gestion, citing data provided by the company specializing in financial information Morningstar.
The French company also specifies that it owns Senior bonds whose repayment is not affected by the merger with UBS, and that it does not hold either at the end of 2022 or more recently Credit Suisse shares, the price of which fell by 66% in less than two weeks.