Taxpayers can’t pay for ‘misconduct of banks’ – Swiss finance minister

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ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said on Saturday that the country’s banks had exhausted public “goodwill”, as the government seeks to strike a balance in new financial regulations following last year’s Credit Suisse crisis.

Switzerland wants measures that protect both the banking sector and the taxpayer, Keller-Sutter said, after plans to strengthen capital requirements ran into opposition from UBS, the country’s biggest lender which bought Credit Suisse last year.

“What I can say clearly is that it cannot be the case that taxpayers foot the bill for the misconduct of banks and managers,” Keller-Sutter told Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung.

“No one in this country understands this anymore – the goodwill has been used up.”

The government earlier this year laid out plans for tougher capital requirements for UBS and Switzerland’s three other big banks in a bid to make the financial sector more robust after the crash of Credit Suisse.

Details of the exact capital requirements are yet to emerge, but the possibility that UBS could be made to hold up $15 billion to $25 billion in additional capital have met resistance from the bank.

The government wanted a competitive banking sector, but also had a responsibility for the whole country and therefore take precautions to prevent an uncontrolled failure of a systemically important bank, Keller-Sutter told the newspaper.

“This is a balancing act,” she said. “We must find a balance between the competitiveness and security of the financial centre.

“The banks also want stability – so the two goals are not mutually exclusive.”