The capital plans announced by Credit Suisseyesterday have turned the Swiss clocks back to 2008, when it last raised capital. The bank will conjure up SFr15.3bn . Funny that. When the Swiss National Bank’s financial stability report questioned its capital position last month, Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse’s chief executive, and the board vehemently denied the need for more. Credit Suisse has caved in and “accelerated” measures to put its capital position beyond doubt. They are a sound first step but, critically, do not yet tick the Basel III box.

The capital plan has two phases: SFr8.7bn now, the rest by the end of the year. The first slug comes from a placing of mandatory convertible notes to raise SFr3.8bn from investors (backed by Qatari and Singaporean sovereign wealth friends and other blue-chip investors). Other measures include exchanging hybrids for contingent convertible bonds and treating SFr2.3bn of tier one participation securities (also hybrid capital) as core equity capital.

All of this is under Swiss capital rules, lifting Credit Suisse’s core capital ratio to 7 per cent. Trouble is, most investors want compliance with Basel III’s global requirements today. This excludes participation securities, reducing Credit Suisse’s fully loaded Basel III ratio to only 6.3 per cent, 70 basis points adrift of the 2019 Basel III minimum.