Can Anyone Fix This?

UBS takes over Credit Suisse to save it, and the future of Swiss banking is at stake

Marcel Ospel, the Swiss banker dubbed “Herr der UBS,” or “Master of UBS,” by his biographer, had a story about what happens when the mighty fall. He built UBS Group AG into a global behemoth, and became one of the leading financial figures of his time, only to see the bank come close to collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.

Scorned as a national failure, Ospel later bumped into a lawyer he knew. He got the cold shoulder. “When I was head of UBS,” he sadly recalled to the biographer, “this guy would do anything I wanted.”

Ospel didn’t live to see today’s great humbling in Zurich (he died in 2020, at age 70). But his sentiment then—once we were kings, all things must pass—seems even more apt now. Fifteen years after UBS had to be bailed out, rival Credit Suisse Group AG has collapsed into its arms. The twin pillars of Swiss banking as the world has known them have become one monolith towering over the local competition.

Just about everything that once made Switzerland a byword for world-class finance— stability and discretion combined with global ambition—has been tested and found wanting. “The damage to Switzerland’s reputation is going to be terrible,” says Arturo Bris, a professor of finance at IMD business school in Lausanne.