Saved from collapse
Credit Suisse wants to pay out bonuses
03/20/2023, 2:24 p.m
As a rule, success bonuses are transferred in the event of success. It’s different at Credit Suisse. Even an emergency sale at a ridiculous price is no obstacle to paying out bonuses there.
If the management of the rescued Credit Suisse (CS) has its way, the bank will pay out the promised bonuses next Friday as previously planned. This is reported by the financial news agency Bloomberg, citing an internal letter to the bank’s employees. There should also be salary increases that have already been agreed. Bonuses are paid for the past year. The bank recorded a loss of 7.3 billion francs in 2022, its highest loss since the financial crisis.
And now the badly hit Credit Suisse is being taken over by the major Swiss bank UBS for three billion francs, which will also be responsible for losses of up to five billion francs. The Swiss National Bank grants the banks a loan of up to CHF 100 billion. And the government also gives UBS a guarantee of nine billion francs.
According to Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter, at least the management of the rescued Credit Suisse cannot count on bonuses. “Of course there are measures against the CS management,” said the minister on SRF radio. It is the task of the Financial Market Authority (Finma) to ban bonuses. “It can be assumed that this is the case,” Keller-Sutter continued. A spokesman for Finma told the AWP news agency that “such” questions would soon be clarified.
The newspaper “Tages-Anzeiger” meanwhile, looking at the annual reports, has calculated that the bank has made a loss of 3.2 billion francs since 2013. In the same period, top managers pocketed CHF 32 billion in bonuses.
