Credit Suisse shares fall to record low as top investor rules out more funding
theguardian.comCredit Suisse shares have plunged more than 20% to record lows after its largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank (SNB), said it would not be able to stump up more cash for the beleaguered Swiss bank because of regulatory restrictions.
SNB’s chairman, Ammar al-Khudairy, said he would not be able to spend any more money to support Credit Suisse, since the Middle Eastern lenderhad already accumulated a 9.9% stake. “Well we can’t … We cannot because we would go above 10%,” he told Reuters in an interview.
However, Al Khudairy said he did not believe that Credit Suisse would need a fresh capital injection. “I don’t think they will need extra money; if you look at their ratios, they’re fine. And they operate under a strong regulatory regime in Switzerland and in other countries,” he said on the sidelines of a conference in Riyadh.
However, the prospect of limits on cash from white knight investors from the Middle East still spooked markets, sending Credit Suisse shares down more than 15% to a record low of 1.73 Swiss francs a share, before trading was halted. Investors also sold European banking stocks, which have already been battered this week after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
Shares in other big European banks slumped on the news, with trading briefly halted and then restarting in Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Monte dei Paschi di Siena and UniCredit after dropping more than 10%.
The Swiss lender UBS dropped 5.7% and Germany’s Deutsche Bank slipped 8%. UK-headquartered Standard Chartered fell 5.8% and HSBC, which bought the UK operations of the collapsed US lender Silicon Valley Bank in a government-brokered deal on Monday, dropped 4%.
Slumping banking and insurance stocks sent the FTSE 100 sliding by 2.5% to its lowest
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