ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS concluded in February that it was undesirable to buy struggling rival Credit Suisse, but that it should be prepared in case the bank ran into “serious financial difficulties”.
In a statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), UBS said it had been studying since December the potential impact of an acquisition of its competitor Credit Suisse.
The statement, dated April 26, provides the clearest insight yet into UBS’s mindset and shows it was interested in its struggling competitor months before its hastily arranged rescue. by the Swiss authorities.
In March, UBS agreed to acquire Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs (3.06 billion euros) and said it would bear up to 5 billion Swiss francs in losses, as part of a bailout backed by 250 billion Swiss francs in public aid.
Swiss authorities and UBS rushed to complete the takeover to retain Credit Suisse customers and employees, according to Reuters.
UBS said in its filing that the merger still needs to be approved by regulators in the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.
The Swiss bank last month obtained temporary clearance from European Union competition authorities, while the US Federal Reserve approved the UBS Group’s acquisition of Credit Suisse’s US subsidiaries.
(Report Noele Illien, written by Matthias Williams and Tomasz Janowski; French version Dina Kartit, edited by Kate Entringer)
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