ZURICH – Estimates that Swiss bank UBS will require an additional $15 billion to $25 billion in capital under government proposals aimed at strengthening the banking sector are exactly right, Switzerland’s finance minister said on Tuesday.
“That’s right, those orders of magnitude are credible,” Swiss finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.
Keller-Sutter spoke after the Swiss government last week presented proposals to tighten regulation for banks deemed “too big to fail”, notably UBS, which said the lender would face tighter capital requirements in the future.
The government proposals, which still have to undergo a lengthy legislative process, did not state how much more capital UBS would need, but gave rise to analysts’ calculations ranging from $15 billion to $25 billion, the paper noted.
Tages-Anzeiger said Keller-Sutter responded to a question about amounts in that range, but that she did not indicate which end of the spectrum she leaned toward.