Swiss finance minister says new rules needed after Credit Suisse crisis

SWISS Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said getting UBS Group to buy Credit Suisse was the less risky move and that the government must act to ensure that taxpayers are protected in any future banking crises.

“We have to act, we have no other choice,” she said in an interview with Neue Zurcher Zeitung. “We have to ensure that a major bank can go under without, in the worst-case scenario, dragging an entire country into the abyss.”

Keller-Sutter declined to comment on the new proposals that will be put to parliament in the spring, but said that “unpleasant issues” will be debated.

She noted that the billions of francs of liquidity the government guaranteed as part of the Credit Suisse rescue would have been put at greater risk if the bank had been liquidated.

“This has nothing to do with hostility towards systemically important banks, but rather with our responsibility for the Swiss economy,” she said. BLOOMBERG