Sunday July 6, 01:12 PM
Swiss watchdog wants UBS, Credit Suisse to put aside more capital: reports
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GENEVA (AFP) - Swiss banks UBS (Virt-X: UBSN.VX - news) and Credit Suisse would have to set aside 70 billion Swiss francs (43.5 billion euros, 68.3 billion dollars) more in company capital as Switzerland's banking watchdog moves to prevent a repeat of the subprime crisis, a Swiss newspaper reported Sunday.
The newspaper Sonntag quoted a parliamentarian Hans Kaufmann saying that the Federal Banking Commission would require additional provisions of "40 billion francs for UBS and 30 billion francs for Credit Suisse".
Banking commission spokesman Alain Bichsel confirmed that a sum had been proposed and that the banks have until the end of summer to put forward their positions.
"We would issue the definitive provision in autumn," he told the newspaper.
Both banks have been hard-hit by the US subprime mortgage crisis, with UBS writing down over 37 billion dollars in assets and Credit Suisse with around 10 billion Swiss francs in writedowns since the onset of the crisis.
The banking commission and the Swiss central bank had earlier said that one of the safeguards that should be put in place would be a higher capital base.
Philipp Hildebrand, who is vice-chairman of the Swiss central bank's governing board, said last month that a higher capital requirement was needed.
He also suggested the introduction of a so-called leverage ratio which would put a limit on leverage to stop banks from over-leveraging their assets.
Meanwhile, another Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung said Sunday that the commission had sent its proposal of new regulations to the banks last week.
But Credit Suisse has already warned against these new measures.
The bank (TBHS - news) 's spokesman Alex Biscaro told Sonntagszeitung that "measures must be targetted at the actual problems, and from our point of view, the leverage ratio and capital buffers are not the case."
He added that these "one-sided" measures could danger the competitiveness of Swiss banks and the Swiss financial centre.
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