ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS on Friday completed the merger of the main parent companies of the Swiss bank and Credit Suisse, which it acquired last year after its longtime rival collapsed, putting an end to one of the bastions of the country’s financial sector.
Shares in UBS ticked upwards after the business announced it had succeeded to all the rights and obligations of Credit Suisse, including all outstanding Credit Suisse debt instruments, and were trading up by 1.35% at around 1106 GMT.
The merger concluded within the planned timeline and was facilitated by strong support from global regulators, said UBS, whose shares have jumped about two-thirds since it snapped up Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion).
The parent merger is expected to allow the Swiss bank to get started with trickier stages of the integration such as combining IT systems, migrating clients from Credit Suisse and cutting the enlarged bank’s workforce of more than 110,000.
UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said the merger was a “significant milestone” in the integration, which would be crucial to facilitating the migration of clients onto UBS platforms.
“It will also unlock the next phase of cost, capital, funding and tax benefits from the second half of 2024,” he said.
The step follows a shake-up in the executive board of the bank announced on Thursday which will split its top wealth management role, carving out new responsibilities for two leading contenders to run the bank after Ermotti.
The UBS absorption of Credit Suisse has left Switzerland with a single global bank, one boasting a balance sheet around twice the size of the country’s annual economic output.
That has stirred fears of the potential damage that any problems at UBS could cause for Switzerland, and prompted the government to set about crafting measures aimed at containing the risk of a bank that is deemed “too big to fail” (TBTF).
Shares in UBS took a knock after the government laid out its TBTF proposals early last month. But they later recovered and at around 28.5 per share, they are now trading higher than they were before the government unveiled the plan.
In its statement, UBS said the transition to a single U.S. intermediate holding company is planned for June 7, and that the merger of Credit Suisse Switzerland and UBS Switzerland is still expected to occur in the third quarter of 2024.
($1 = 0.9058 Swiss francs)
