Largest Swiss bank to close most Russian former Credit Suisse accounts
The Swiss bank UBS will close most of the accounts of Russians that it inherited after the takeover of Credit Suisse, Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported, citing sources.
In total, UBS is going to lose 50 to 75 percent of its inherited client base due to non-compliance with its risk criteria.
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The specific names and titles of the Russian clients are not known, but NZZ assumes that those will be ‘offshore clients’, that is, people with Russian passports living outside Switzerland.
UBS had been cautious about Russian clients long before the Russian aggression against Ukraine began in 2014, and then stopped attracting them altogether.
Credit Suisse, in turn, decided to take advantage of the situation, considering the Russian division to be a profit-making machine, NZZ reports.
While UBS declined to comment, the publication points out that the bank declared its desire to consolidate its own risk management principles and corporate culture in the absorbed Credit Suisse.
Off the record, UBS says that this does mean possibly severing the business relationship that Credit Suisse had.
UBS Group took over former rival Credit Suisse Group, which had solvency problems, in June 2023 for CHF 3 billion (USD 3.25 billion), in the largest bank merger since the 2008 global financial crisis.