Credit Suisse and the “social” crisis

The shares of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse they opened the session on Monday 3 October down 9% from the close on Friday September 30th. This is a consequence of various factors, linked both to today’s complex macroeconomic situation and to specific errors and scandals in which the bank was involved over the past few years, which have diminished investor confidence. After the Credit default swap spreads (Cds) – an indicator rather used to assess the financial health of a bank – grew dramatically on Friday, reaching 255 points, compared to 55 at the beginning of the year, the CEO Ulrich Körner tried to reassure their customers in a note viewed by Reutersspecifying that the Swiss group has “capital and liquidity in abundance“, But admitted that the bank is in a”critical phase“.

He took office last July after the controversial resignation of Thomas Gottstein, who remained in office for two years, Körner has evidently failed to reassure his large investors completelywith which, as reported by the Financial Timesthe bank’s top managers spent the weekend on the phone to reassure them.

Collapse on social media

Rumors of an imminent bank collapse have actually been circulating for a while. The bank in fact closed the second quarter of 2022 with a net loss of 1.59 billion francsand analysts believe the bank needs a capital increase of at least 4 billion euros to be able to recover. More concrete rumors about a potential definitive collapse of the bank began to circulate on Twitter over the weekend, with thousands of users sharing graphs and figures that testify to the difficult moment of the institution, and began to hypothesize a collapse comparable to that of the Lehman Brothers of September 15, 2008.

The effect of this sensation on social media it helped to further decrease the level of investor confidence in the bankwhich by one of the investors contacted anonymously by Financial Times has been defined “the worst big bank in Europe“. Despite this, the perception is that the danger of bankruptcy or a complete crisis is not yet immediate. “We are not holding meetings on this subject – were the words of the investor himself -. I don’t think it’s a crisis“.