© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Colm Kelleher, Chairman of UBS Group AG, speaks during the Global Financial Leaders Investment Summit in Hong Kong, China November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS has no interest in buying Swiss bank Credit Suisse, bank chairman Colm Kelleher said in an interview published on Saturday.
previous Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) The president said he was focused on organic growth rather than acquisitions and expanding his business in the United States and ruled out any move to buy his bank’s embattled cross-town rival.
“We don’t want to buy Credit Suisse,” Kelleher told the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
“There are always scenarios, but none that are convincing,” he said when asked if there were any situations in which UBS’s acquisition of Credit Suisse would make sense.
The former CEOs of Credit Suisse and UBS supported a merger between the two banks and held talks in the first half of 2020, Swiss media reported two years ago.
The discussions eventually ended, according to media reports, with both Urs Rohner and Axel Weber leaving their roles at Credit Suisse and UBS, respectively.
Both banks declined to comment on the merger story at the time. Kelleher succeeded Weber in April of last year.
“Our strategic message is: no surprises; organic growth; judge UBS by the numbers, by the US business, by profitability,” he told the newspaper. “In my experience, this message is very well received by institutional shareholders.”
Kelleher said UBS had not benefited much from the troubles at Credit Suisse, which has experienced heavy outflows as wealthy clients turned their backs on the bank after a series of big losses and scandals.
“We’ve checked what’s come down to us,” Kelleher said. “We suspect that most of the outflows went to international banks.”
