Five days after the bankruptcy of the American bank Silicon Valley Bank, another concern took hold, this Wednesday, March 15, of the banking market. A giant in the sector, Credit Suisse, is indeed in turmoil, after its main shareholder, the Saudi National Bank, ruled out any increase in its stake in the capital of the second Swiss bank. “The answer is absolutely not,” its chairman, Ammar al-Khudairy, told Bloomberg TV, “for several reasons, which are regulatory and statutory.” And if that of Credit Suisse, Axel Lehman, said that his establishment did not need help, the announcement had a devastating effect: this Wednesday, the action of the bank lost up to 23.6 %.
The concern of a default of the Swiss lender
It must be said that Credit Suisse is not doing well. Last November, the bank launched a major restructuring, which led it to turn to a Saudi shareholder. Then, in February, it unveiled a loss of 7.3 billion Swiss francs for the 2022 financial year. A situation that raises fears of the worst. According to the Bloomberg news agency, which specializes in finance, the price of insurance against the risk of a default by the Swiss bank has more than tripled in three days. The weaknesses of this heavyweight of the European financial sector are blowing a wind of storm on its colleagues.
This Wednesday, the banking stocks of the Old Continent posted losses exceeding 60 billion euros. At the end of the morning, the value of BNP Paribas fell by 11.11%, that of Société Générale fell by 11.01%, and that of Commerzbank by 10.08%. These poor results weigh heavily on the European indices, all down sharply on Wednesday. For example, the CAC 40, down more than 3.5%, reached its lowest level since January 10.
This atmosphere of fear is also to be attributed to two bank failures in the United States. Those, in a few days, of the American banks Sillicon Valley Bank and Signature, which became respectively the second and third most important bankruptcies in the history of the country. During this time, the CAC 40 presented very good results, but the wind coming from across the Atlantic, coupled with the clumsy declarations of the main shareholder of Credit Suisse, made everything falter.