When your largest single shareholder decides that enough is enough, that it is no longer prepared to throw good money after bad to prop up your finances, you really do have a problem. And that is exactly what has happened to Credit Suisse this morning.
The Saudi National Bank, which owns a 10 per cent share in the Swiss bank, announced that it is no longer prepared to put up any more capital to prop the bank up. Credit Suisse shares promptly fell by 20 per cent before trading was suspended. Yes, Saudi National Bank has trashed the value of its own holding – but evidently reckoned that that is a better course of action than continuing to throw money at the problem. For a bank, that is the smell of death.
The better regulation we were promised in order to prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis has not done its job
It is little use pretending otherwise: Jeremy Hunt presents today’s budget against the backdrop of a full-scale global banking crisis.
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