ZURICH (Reuters) – Following is a timeline outlining the 167-year history of Credit Suisse Group, the Zurich-based bank that is being bought at a knockdown price by Swiss rival UBS after a string of scandals, losses and management upheavals.

1856

Politician and business leader Alfred Escher founds Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA) to finance the expansion of the railroad network and promote Swiss industrialisation.

1870

SKA opens first foreign representative office in New York.

1876

The bank moves into new headquarters on Zurich’s Paradeplatz; its first branch outside Zurich opens in Basel nearly three decades later.

1934

First Boston becomes the first publicly held investment bank in the United States.

1939

SKA creates Swiss American Corporation (New York) to focus on the underwriting and investment business.

1962

SKA takes over White, Weld and Co AG in Zurich from U.S. investment bank White Weld, and renames it Clariden Finanz AG.

1964

SKA gets a licence as a full-service bank in New York.

1977

Chiasso Affair money-laundering scandal leads to a historic loss and spurs the bank’s transition to an international financial group.

1982

SKA becomes the first Swiss bank with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange via its SASI unit; CS Holding is set up as a sister company of SKA to hold stakes in industrial companies.

1988

CS Holding buys a 45% stake in First Boston as part of a rescue deal, and renames it CS First Boston; the two had first linked up a decade earlier to operate in the London bond market.

1989

CS Holding becomes SKA group’s parent company.

1990

The group takes a controlling stake in U.S. investment bank CS First Boston and buys Bank Leu, a Swiss private bank.

1993

The group buys Volksbank, Switzerland’s fourth-largest bank, and a year later buys Neue Aargauer Bank.

1997

A reorganisation turns CS Holding into Credit Suisse Group and drops the SKA name; it also buys insurer Winterthur, a strategic partner.

1999

The group buys the asset management business of Warburg, Pincus & Co, followed by the purchase of Wall Street firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) a year later.

2002

A reorganisation creates two units: Credit Suisse Financial Services and Credit Suisse First Boston; two years later it splits into three units by adding Winterthur.

2005

Credit Suisse and CSFB merge and stop using the Credit Suisse First Boston brand name.

2006

The group divests Winterthur to French insurer AXA.

2007

The group merges four private banking units and a securities trading company into Clariden Leu.

2007/2008

The bank survives the global financial crisis without needing a state bailout, unlike rival UBS.

2012

The group absorbs Clariden Leu and merges private banking and asset management into one division.

2013

The group buys Morgan Stanley’s wealth management businesses in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

2015

The group realigns under CEO Tidjane Thiam into three wealth management units supported by two investment banking divisions.

2020

In February, a scandal over the bank’s covert surveillance operations leads to Thiam’s departure.

In March, U.S. investment fund Archegos implodes, saddling Credit Suisse with a $5.5 billion loss.

The same month it has to freeze $10 billion in supply chain finance funds linked to insolvent British financier Greensill Capital, which it had marketed to clients as low-risk products.

2021

Antonio Horta-Osorio resigns as chairman less than nine months after joining the bank, after breaching COVID-19 quarantine rules. Alex Lehmann replaces him.

JULY 2022

The bank names restructuring expert Ulrich Koerner as CEO to replace Thomas Gottstein and announces another strategic review.

OCTOBER 2022

Announces a sweeping plan to refocus on banking for the wealthy, including a 4 billion Swiss franc ($4 billion) capital raising, a headcount reduction of 9,000 jobs by end-2025, and separating out its investment bank to create CS First Boston.

Saudi National Bank says it will buy shares giving it a stake of as much as 9.9%.

MARCH 2023

Credit Suisse’s 2022 annual report identifies “material weaknesses” in internal controls over financial reporting.

The bank also said customer outflows had stabilised but “had not yet reversed”.

The Swiss bank’s shares drop by as much as 30% after its largest shareholder Saudi National Bank said it could not provide more support because of regulatory constraints.

Credit Suisse secures a $54 billion lifeline from the Swiss central bank to shore up liquidity, the first major global bank to get emergency funding since the 2008 financial crisis.

The Swiss authorities provide assurances that Credit Suisse has met “the capital and liquidity requirements imposed on systemically important banks”.

At least four major banks, including Societe Generale SA and Deutsche Bank AG, restrict new trades involving Credit Suisse or its securities, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

After a frantic weekend of negotiations, UBS agrees to buy Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) in stock and assume up to 5 billion francs in losses, in a deal engineered by Swiss authorities to avoid more market-shaking turmoil in global banking.

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Edmund Klamann, Alexander Smith, Frances Kerry and Louise Heavens)

(Reuters) -Goldman Sachs Group Inc traders were preparing to take bids on claims against Credit Suisse Group’s riskiest bonds, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Clients were told in a message late Sunday that the New York-based bank would soon start trading claims in the so-called additional tier 1 bonds, or AT1s, according to the report.

The Swiss lender’s additional tier 1 shares with a nominal value of around 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.24 billion) will be written down completely after the Swiss government provided support for UBS’ takeover of Credit Suisse.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

(Reporting by Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

By John Revill Amanda Cooper

LONDON/ZURICH (Reuters) -Shares in UBS plunged on Monday, heading for their biggest one-day fall since 2008 after its weekend rescue of ailing rival Credit Suisse ignited concerns among investors about the long-term benefits of the deal.

UBS, with a hefty backstop from Swiss authorities, agreed to buy Credit Suisse on Sunday for just a fraction of its market value in a package orchestrated by Swiss regulators.

The bank will pay 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) for Credit Suisse and assume up to $5.4 billion in losses.

Shares in UBS fell by as much as 16% in early trading, the most since September 2008. They were last down 15% at 14.47 francs. Since the start of March alone, they’ve lost almost 30% in value, set for their largest monthly loss since September 1998.

Johann Scholtz, analyst at Morningstar, said the acquisition should ultimately benefit UBS.

“A week can be a very long time in financial markets. UBS acquiring Credit Suisse for 3 billion francs a week ago would have seemed like a terrific deal. Now the position is less clear,” he said.

“Credit Suisse likely experienced significant net outflows of client assets last week, eroding its revenue base. We, however, believe that UBS can extract value from the acquisition. It is in a much better position to execute a radical restructuring of Credit Suisse’s business than Credit Suisse was,” Scholtz added.

Credit Suisse shares slid by more than 60% to around 0.69 Swiss francs ($0.7417), while the value of its additional tier 1 (AT1) bonds – a type of bond issued by banks that make up the capital buffers regulators require them to hold – dropped as low as 1 cent on the dollar.

The Swiss regulator demanded Credit Suisse write down 16 billion Swiss francs worth of the debt to zero as part of the merger deal, angering bondholders.

A $1 billion AT1 bond with a coupon of 4.5% was bid as low as 1 cent on the dollar, Tradeweb pricing showed.

“The next few hours of trading will give us a better picture on whether the crisis is contained,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said.

“In theory, there is no reason for the Credit Suisse crisis to extend, as what triggered the last quake for Credit Suisse was a confidence crisis – which doesn’t concern UBS – a bank outside of the turmoil, with, in addition, ample liquidity and guarantee from the SNB (Swiss National Bank) and the government.”

At Friday’s close, Credit Suisse had a total market value of $8 billion. Just six months ago, it was worth $13 billion.

JPMorgan said that although UBS stood to gain in the longer-term from the deal, the writedown of the AT1 bonds would impact other European banks.

“We believe this AT1 write-down by a systemically important bank will have negative implications for the wider European Banks’ AT1 market as well as overall funding profile and Cost of Equity for the Banks,” JPMorgan strategists Kian Abouhossein and Amit Ranjan said in a note on Monday.

An index of European banking shares tanked on Monday, losing more than 4% as shares in the likes of Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas dropped between 5.5-7.5%.

($1 = 0.9303 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Amanda Cooper, Karin Strohecker, Yoruk Baceli and Simon Jessop in London, John Revill in Zurich and Gdansk newsroom; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried are nearing an agreement with U.S. prosecutors on revised bail conditions for the indicted FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder, who is trying to convince a skeptical judge he should remain free.

In a letter filed on Friday night in Manhattan federal court, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Christian Everdell said both sides believed they were “close to a resolution”, and expect to formally propose new restrictions by next week.

Bankman-Fried, 31, faces a trial set for Oct. 2 on charges of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, and making large illegal political donations to buy influence in Washington, D.C.

Bail talks occurred this week after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan at a March 10 hearing renewed his concerns that Bankman-Fried’s electronic communications with others might exceed the bounds of his $250 million bail package.

Kaplan’s approval is needed to modify Bankman-Fried’s bail.

The former billionaire has pleaded not guilty to eight counts, and not yet been arraigned on four. He is living under house arrest with his parents in Palo Alto, California.

Prosecutors raised the specter of witness tampering in January after Bankman-Fried tried to contact John Ray, who became FTX’s chief executive when the company filed for bankruptcy in November, and an in-house lawyer.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have said their client was trying to help, not interfere.

At the March 10 hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers proposed giving Bankman-Fried a flip phone with no internet capability and a basic laptop with limited functions.

That was too generous for Kaplan, who said Bankman-Fried was “inventive” and could conceivably “find a way around” the restrictions without being caught.

In Friday’s letter, Everdell also sought the judge’s permission to let Bankman-Fried in the meantime use a laptop to access some FTX materials.

Though the laptop would lack monitoring software or restrict Bankman-Fried’s internet access, a lawyer or paralegal would oversee his use and take the laptop away when Bankman-Fried finished with it, Everdell said.

The case is U.S. v. Bankman-Fried, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-cr-00673.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Sonali Paul)

By Stefanno Sulaiman

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s central bank governor Perry Warjiyo secured on Monday approval from a key parliamentary body for his reappointment for a second term, after pledging to maintain a “pro-stability” monetary stance until 2024.

Warjiyo’s five-year term as Bank Indonesia (BI) chief ends in May. Full parliamentary approval is still needed for his reappointment, though lawmakers typically follow the financial committee’s recommendation based on a so-called “fit-and-proper test”.

Earlier on Monday, Warjiyo vowed to strengthen BI’s policy mix to achieve its price stability goal as well as supporting sustainable economic growth, giving a nod to a recently passed law that widened BI’s mandate to include propping up growth.

“This year and next year, we will direct our monetary policy to guard stability, while other policies … we will direct to support economic growth,” he said.

BI would lower its inflation target to a 1.5% to 3.5% range in the medium term, compared with the current target of 2% to 4%, he said.

Inflation in Southeast Asia’s largest economy has stayed above target since last year amid high global commodity prices.

Warjiyo repeated that BI’s interest rate hikes totalling 225 basis points between August to January were sufficient to guide inflation back to within target later this year.

“We will focus a lot on the stability of the rupiah exchange rate,” he said, citing global uncertainties such as the war in Ukraine and rate hikes in the United States.

In his presentation materials, Warjiyo displayed an outlook for economic growth to accelerate to a range of 4.9% to 5.7% in 2025 and 5.1% to 5.9% in 2028.

BI’s 2023 economic growth outlook was in the upper end of a 4.5% to 5.3% range.

During his address, the governor sought to sell his achievements in his current term, including overseeing BI’s response to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s previous tightening cycle and the pandemic, including BI’s bond buying operations.

Warjiyo told lawmakers BI’s direct purchase of bonds from the government could only be done during a crisis and should be carried out in a “targeted, transparent and temporary” way.

BI bought 1,104.85 trillion rupiah ($71.86 billion) of government bonds between 2020 and 2022 to help Indonesia fund additional expenditure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Warjiyo, 64, is a career central banker. He has been credited with helping to maintain a strong Indonesian economy in the face of volatile markets in recent years, though some economists have criticised him for starting BI’s recent rate hike cycle too late and ending it too soon.

Eriko Sotarduga, a lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, said the financial commission backed Warjiyo due to his experience handling the impact of crises such a the U.S.- China trade war in 2018 and the pandemic.

“Because what we will face in the future is very difficult, there has been a bank crisis in the U.S.,” he told reporters, referring to recent problems engulfing some U.S. banks.

Other lawmakers also urged Warjiyo to prepare for the risk of U.S. banking woes impacting Indonesia’s economy or the rupiah.

($1 = 15,375.0000 rupiah)

(Reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor, Ed Davies)

By Tom Sims and John Revill

ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland awoke to a new era on Monday after UBS swept up Credit Suisse in a government-brokered rescue that dented the country’s long-held pride in its banking expertise.

A bank employee association said it was deeply shocked by the potential consequences from the deal to save the 167-year-old Credit Suisse after customer and market confidence in the lender evaporated.

In a package orchestrated by Swiss regulators on Sunday, UBS will pay 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.23 billion) for Credit Suisse and assume up to $5.4 billion in losses.

Headquartered just a few minutes’ walk away from each other, not far from Lake Zurich in the centre of the city with snow-capped mountains on the horizon, the two lenders have been pillars of global finance for decades.

    The banks, two of the most systemically relevant in global finance, hold combined assets of up to 140% of Swiss gross domestic product, according to the central bank, in a country heavily dependent on finance for its economy.

Graphic: Bank exposure Bank exposure https://www.reuters.com/graphics/CREDITSUISSE-CRISIS/zgvobarewpd/chart.png

The Swiss Bank Employees Association, in a statement to Reuters, demanded that UBS keep job cuts to an “absolute minimum”.

“The jobs of very many employees are at stake,” it said, adding that it was in touch with management.

The statement underscores the sense of unease in Switzerland, with its reputation as a global financial center on the line.

Green Party lawmaker Gerhard Andrey said that Credit Suisse is “such a visible institute”.

“This puts us in a very difficult situation as a country,” he said.

Some expressed concerns about the dominant position of UBS.

Tobias Straumann, professor of economic history at the University of Zurich, said it was “astonishing” that authorities did not make special provisions to deal with competition.

Swiss media was also shocked by the developments.

“A zombie is gone but a monster is born,” read the title of a commentary in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, often seen as the voice of the establishment.

“A few months ago, nobody would have thought that Credit Suisse would fail. However it is not an accident,” the newspaper wrote in the piece accusing the bank of arrogance and pride.

“The Swiss bank had a stock market value of CHF 100 billion in 2007, of which CHF 7 billion were left last Friday,” it said.

“There has thus been a massive destruction of value, at the hands of managers who have carelessly underestimated risks and helpless board members who have too often failed to control things.”

The Tages-Anzeiger newspaper described the affair as a “historic scandal”.

“The federal government, the financial supervisory authority and the national bank let themselves be ripped off by UBS,” the paper wrote.

    “The new mega bank has the advantages – taxpayers, customers, and employees have the disadvantages,” the paper added in an editorial, warning of brutal job cuts ahead.

Still, UBS Chief Executive Ralph Hamers – who will lead the new combined entity as CEO – was confident his bank was up to challenge of making the takeover a success.

“The takeover means that we are bringing back stability and security for CS clients,” Hamers said. “But also that we are upholding the reputation of the Swiss financial centre.”

Other Swiss banks were positioning themselves in a new pecking order in Switzerland’s banking landscape as Credit Suisse, previously the No. 2 bank, falls by the wayside.

    “Zeurcher Kantonalbank offers all business areas of a universal bank and is thus a complement to the newly emerging big bank,” Chief Executive Urs Baumann wrote on Linkedin.

(Reporting by Tom Sims and John Revill; additional reporting by Noele Illien; editing by Robert Birsel and Louise Heavens)