B-18-01 FINMA Circ. 18/1

In a ruling dated 16 January 2024 (B_4185/2020), the Federal Administrative Court (FAT) upheld a FINMA decision of 19 June 2020 finding that a Swiss company and one of its directors had, as a group, engaged in unlawful securities trading, in the absence of authorisation, as an issuing house that had offered securities in the form of investment tokens to the public on a professional basis. As part of an initial coin offering (ICO) with a foreign issuer, the Swiss[...]

On May 17, the Europe Middle East & Africa Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee (DC) of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) issued an initial ruling on the absence of government intervention constituting a credit event for credit default swaps (CDS) on Credit Suisse's subordinated bonds for the amortization of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds. The day after its decision, the DC received a second request to establish whether a bankruptcy constituting a credit event had occurred in respect of[...]

Of course, the full consequences of the Credit Suisse rescue are not yet known. Between March 16 and 19, the Federal Council, the SNB, FINMA and the Boards of Directors of UBS and Credit Suisse took the decisions that enabled the two banks to merge (see https://cdbf.ch/1272/). The SNB granted extraordinary loans to Credit Suisse, secured by two federal loans. A first urgent commitment credit was granted in the form of a default risk guarantee of up to CHF 100[...]