The federal prosecutor’s office in Switzerland has opened an investigation into the circumstances in which the takeover of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse by its rival UBS took place. The prosecutor’s office announced this on Sunday. The prosecutor’s office thus confirms a report by the British business newspaper Financial Times. In it, it said the investigation serves to ascertain whether government officials, regulators and executives at both banks violated Swiss criminal law. There were “numerous aspects of events surrounding Credit Suisse” that warranted an investigation, the Swiss prosecutor said in the paper. Those aspects are now being analyzed to identify any “crimes that fall within the powers of the prosecutor”. The largest Swiss bank UBS took over its ailing competitor Credit Suisse last month for around 3 billion euros. It was an emergency operation, with the support of the Swiss government, to prevent the bankruptcy of Credit Suisse. The share of Credit Suisse had suffered heavy blows after the toppling of several regional banks in the United States. The Swiss major bank UBS wants to reduce the workforce by 20 to 30 percent after the takeover of the ailing competitor Credit Suisse. Worldwide, 25,000 to 36,000 jobs would be on the ramp. This is what the Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung writes, citing an anonymous top manager at the bank. In Switzerland, 11,000 employees should be laid off. Together, the two banks employ nearly 125,000 people worldwide, one third of them in Switzerland.
