UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse for $3.25bn after a frantic weekend of negotiations brokered by Swiss regulators to safeguard the country’s banking system and attempt to prevent a crisis spreading across global markets.
The historic deal follows five days in which the Swiss establishment raced to end a deepening crisis at Credit Suisse that threatened to topple the country’s second-largest lender.
An emergency SFr50bn ($54bn) credit line provided by the Swiss National Bank on Wednesday failed to arrest a steep decline in the bank’s share price, which was exacerbated by wider market turmoil caused by the sudden collapse earlier this month of California-based Silicon Valley Bank.