The Saudi National Bank (SNB) which is Credit Suisse’s biggest backer sparked a freefall in the Swiss bank's today after has said that it remains confident in the troubled bank and that it didn’t need extra money.
Ammar Al Khudairy, SNB’s chairman, said: "We are happy with the transformation plan that Credit Suisse has put forward. It is a very strong bank.
“I don’t think they will need extra money; if you look at the bank’s ratios it's fine.”
Al Khudairy added that SNB could not inject funds into the bank even if it wanted to, citing regulation prohibits stakes in the lender from going above 10%.
SNB currently have a 9.88% holding in Credit Suisse, according to Refinitiv data.
The journey to Credit Suisse’s share suspension has been led by multiple scandals dirtying the reputation of Switzerland’s second-largest bank.
In October 2019, its chief operating officer was fired after it was found the bank had hired private investigators to follow a senior executive across Zurich.
Six months later in March 2021, the bank was hit financially when clients Greensill, a stock lender, and asset manager Archegos collapsed.
That month the two failures cost the bank upwards of US$15bln.
Over a year later and the scandals continued after the Swiss bank was found guilty of failing to prevent money laundering by Bulgarian cocaine traffickers.
Over the last six months, the bank has also:
- Reported its worst annual loss since the financial crisis of 2008.
- Had data stolen by a former staff employee.
- Faced a social media storm that sunk the share price.
- Had a market manipulation investigation opened into comments made by its chairman Axel Lehmann.
Since the issues began in 2021 the share price has had more than 80% of its value wiped, with constant record lows being reached and an increasing number of client withdrawals.