Credit Suisse shares fell sharply on Monday morning. At the same time, European stock markets opened lower, skeptical the day after the hasty closure of the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, under pressure from the Swiss authorities, which did not erase fears about the banking sector. A rescue operation that did not reassure investors about the stability of the banking system despite reassuring statements from European authorities.
At 9:10 a.m., the Parisian market fell by 0.83%, that of Frankfurt by 1.06% and London by 1.01% after a dark week in the banking sector which weighed on all the markets. Earlier in the day, the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed sharply lower (-1.42%). Around 08:15 GMT, the European banking sector index (Stoxx Europe 600/banks) fell by 5.92%. In Paris, BNP Paribas tumbled by more than 8% and Societe Generale by more than 7%. In Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank lost more than 6% and Commerzbank almost 5%. In London, Standard Chartered yielded more than 6%, NatWest more than 4% and HSBC 3%.
The action of the Swiss banking giant UBS fell 8.77% in the first exchanges on Monday, to 15.61 Swiss francs, after the acquisition of its rival to avoid its sinking. For its part, the action of Credit Suisse fell below the price of the offer of UBS, collapsing by 63.70% to 0.6752 Swiss francs. On Sunday, UBS agreed to pay 3 billion francs to take it over.
A “good agreement” for Bruno Le Maire
The day after the announcement of this takeover at a bargain price, the French Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire welcomed a “good agreement”, affirming that the government remained attentive to its consequences on the markets. “I am delighted with this agreement, it is a good agreement,” said the minister on RMC / BFMTV. “However, we are talking about a bank which has a balance sheet of more than 750 billion euros, it weighs heavily in the European context so we remain extremely vigilant about the reaction of the markets”, he added.
However, after a week when banking stocks suffered on the markets, “French banks are solid, they have been tested regularly”, insisted Bruno Le Maire. With the Basel III agreements, “we have imposed extremely strict rules on French banks”, he continued. “When it was necessary to negotiate them, the French banks were not satisfied, finally we reached an agreement and (…) we are very happy to have them today”, he concluded.
A few days after an initial stock market shock caused by the bankruptcy of the American bank SVB, the difficulties of Credit Suisse, precipitated by the refusal of its first shareholder Saudi National Bank (SNB) to increase its stake in the capital, rocked the markets. the last days.