Swiss lower house rejects UBS-Credit Suisse deal
The Swiss parliament’s lower house voted against approving Sf109bn in government guarantees for UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse — a symbolic show of popular and political discontent with the deal.
In total, 102 legislators in the lower house cast their ballot against the motion, 71 were in favour and two abstained in the vote, held just before midnight in Switzerland’s capital, Bern.
Parliament does not have the power to stop the takeover negotiated last month, since the government got approval from a small group of senior legislators — the so-called financial delegation — on the weekend the deal was hashed out. That six-member body has the right to sign off on urgent fiscal matters on behalf of parliament.
Still, the rejection stands in contrast to the upper house which had given its approval earlier on Tuesday, and highlights the anger among legislators on both sides of the political spectrum ahead of elections later this year. The bill will now be sent back to the upper house for further debate on Wednesday.
Here is how the situation might be resolved: Before rejecting the guarantees, the lower house had added provisions that seek to adjust the banking law to limit the risks to the state from systemically relevant banks. The lower house wants the upper to support this stipulation. Once that happens, the lower house could sign off on the deal.
The government had said that “if parliament refuses subsequent approval, it will be tantamount to a political reprimand for the financial delegation, with no legal effect”.
The lower house’s rebuff of the government-brokered deal came despite repeated speeches by senior government ministers that the UBS takeover was the best of a limited number of options.
President Alain Berset said that Credit Suisse’s “negative spiral” spurred his government into action and together with the Swiss National Bank and the country’s banking regulator had acted in “a decisive manner to restore confidence.”