Word: cr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...scandal that prompted these reforms bloomed at 121-year-old Crédit Suisse, whose assets of $18 billion make it one of the storied Big Three of Swiss banking (the other two: Swiss Bank Corp. and Union Bank of Switzerland). Together they account for nearly half of all the banking assets in the country. A Crédit Suisse branch manager. Ernst Kuhrmeier, 57, has been accused of "disloyal management"-the Swiss equivalent of business fraud. He allegedly manipulated more than $800 million in a series of questionable and outright illegal dealings (TIME, May 23). Kuhrmeier...
Last month the officers of Crédit Suisse convened an extraordinary meeting to explain to 3,000 stunned stockholders how the debacle could have occurred. Newly elected Board Chairman Oswald Aeppli was unable to put a specific figure on the bank's losses. So tangled was the trail of the fraudulent investments, he said, that a 100-man Crédit Suisse investigating team has still not sorted out the mess. The investigation could take months longer...
Same Dividend. Other bankers have estimated that the Chiasso affair -named for the town in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino where the scandal centered-could cost the firm some $400 million. Nonetheless. Aeppli assured stockholders that the rest of Crédit Suisse's affairs were in good order and indicated that this year's dividend would most likely be the same as that paid in 1976: $32 per bearer share...
However, the investments did not flourish as the Chiasso bankers hoped they would. Then, in late 1976, the Italian government, which hoped to lure home lire, offered a blanket amnesty to all Italians who would bring back their money. Result: withdrawals were so large that Crédit Suisse's branch in Chiasso was forced to turn for help to the home office in Zurich. The head office's investigation led to police involvement. Three Chiasso bankers, including Branch Manager Ernst Kuhrmeier, have been arrested on charges of criminal mismanagement...
...gesture of solidarity, the other members of the Big Three, the Swiss Bank Corporation and Union Bank of Switzerland, offered Crédit Suisse a $ 1.2 billion line of Crédit. Crédit Suisse refused the offer, explaining that it could easily absorb the Chiasso loss, and indeed that seems true. But the Chiasso affair and the other failures are raising severe questions about the efficiency, as well as the ethics of Swiss banking. Even some Swiss financiers are charging that Swiss bankers are vastly overrated and that only the constantly climbing Swiss franc makes them appear proficient...