Credit Suisse, a 167-year-old Swiss bank, lost trust in March 2023 and was rescued in a forced weekend takeover by larger rival UBS. On 19 March 2023 UBS agreed to pay CHF 3 billion (about S$4.4 billion at the time) in an all-share deal, with Credit Suisse shareholders getting 1 UBS share for every 22.48 shares they held, worth roughly CHF 0.76 a share. The Swiss authorities backed the deal with up to CHF 9 billion of loss protection for UBS and CHF 100 billion of liquidity support from the central bank. The most contested part: regulator FINMA ordered about CHF 16.5 billion of Credit Suisse's Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds to be written down to zero, wiping out those bondholders while shareholders still got something. The bank did not go bankrupt and depositors did not lose money. By March 2026 UBS had finished migrating the last Credit Suisse clients and the brand is being retired. In October 2025 a Swiss court ruled the AT1 wipeout was unlawful, a decision FINMA is appealing, so the legal fight is still live.
Credit Suisse was one of 30 banks the global regulators label systemically important, the too-big-to-fail tier. It did not collapse because of one bad bet. It died from years of scandals, losses and management churn that slowly drained confidence, until a few days of panic in March 2023 finished it off.
When customers and lenders stopped trusting it, they pulled their money. A bank cannot survive that, because it lends out most of what it holds and cannot return everyone's cash at once. The Swiss government, central bank and regulator forced a rescue over a single weekend to stop the panic spreading to other banks. UBS, the only buyer big enough, took it over.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1856, in Zurich |
| Staff | About 50,500 people worldwide |
| Assets under management | About CHF 1.29 trillion |
| Full-year 2022 net loss | About CHF 7.3 billion |
| Status by 2024 | Merged into UBS; legal entity dissolved 31 May 2024 |
Banks run on a simple, fragile model. You deposit money, the bank pays you a little interest, and it lends most of that money out at a higher rate to earn the difference. At any moment only a small slice is actually sitting in the vault. That works fine as long as not everyone wants their money back at the same time.
A bank run is what happens when they do. If enough customers fear the bank is in trouble, they rush to withdraw, the bank runs out of ready cash, and the fear becomes self-fulfilling. Modern runs are faster than ever because money moves with a tap on a phone. Credit Suisse lost more than CHF 110 billion of client funds in the last three months of 2022 alone, and the bleed never really stopped: about CHF 61 billion more walked out the door in the first quarter of 2023, with more than CHF 10 billion leaving in the single week before the rescue.
This is also why deposit insurance exists. The idea is that if savers know their money is protected up to a limit, they have less reason to panic and join a run. In Singapore that backstop is the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation, covered later in this article.
By 2023 the failure looked sudden, but the rot went back years. Credit Suisse stumbled from one expensive scandal to the next, and each one chipped away at the trust a bank depends on.
Two 2021 blow-ups did the most damage. The bank lost about US$5.5 billion when Archegos, a US family office it had lent heavily to, imploded. Around the same time it had to freeze and unwind US$10 billion of funds tied to Greensill Capital, a supply-chain finance firm that went insolvent, leaving clients fighting to recover their money. Both pointed to weak risk controls at the top.
Then came the steady bleed. In February 2022 the Suisse Secrets leak exposed accounts linked to criminals and sanctioned figures. In June 2022 a Swiss court convicted the bank over laundering linked to a Bulgarian cocaine network, the first criminal conviction of a major Swiss bank (a Swiss appeals court later acquitted Credit Suisse in November 2024 after the accused employee had died, and prosecutors then appealed that acquittal). It posted a full-year 2022 loss of about CHF 7.3 billion, its worst since the 2008 crisis, and in early 2023 admitted material weaknesses in its financial reporting controls. A bank that keeps telling the market it has fixed its problems, and keeps finding new ones, eventually runs out of patience from clients.
| Year | Event | Rough cost or impact |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | US tax-evasion settlement | US$2.6 billion fine |
| 2021 | Archegos family office collapse | About US$5.5 billion loss |
| 2021 | Greensill Capital funds frozen | US$10 billion of client funds stuck |
| 2022 | Suisse Secrets data leak | Reputational, accounts of criminals exposed |
| 2022 | Bulgarian money-laundering conviction | First criminal conviction of a major Swiss bank; overturned on appeal in Nov 2024 |
| 2022 | Full-year loss | About CHF 7.3 billion, worst since 2008 |
| 2023 | Admitted control weaknesses, deposit run | Triggered the final crisis |
The final crisis ran from roughly 9 to 19 March 2023. It started badly because of events overseas. Silicon Valley Bank failed in the US on 10 March, the biggest US bank failure since 2008, followed days later by Signature Bank. Nervous investors began scanning the world for the next weak link, and Credit Suisse, already wounded, was the obvious candidate.
On 15 March the bank's largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, was asked on television whether it would put in more money. It held a 9.9% stake bought for about US$1.5 billion only months earlier, and the answer was a flat no, citing regulatory limits on going past 10%. The comment was about ownership rules, not a judgement on the bank, but the market did not care about the distinction. Credit Suisse shares fell about 24% that day, an all-time low. The central bank stepped in overnight with a CHF 50 billion liquidity line, which bought time but not confidence; the withdrawals kept coming. Saudi National Bank would go on to lose roughly US$1.2 billion of its investment once the UBS deal priced the bank at a fraction of its old value.
Over the weekend of 18 to 19 March, Swiss officials forced through a sale to UBS before markets reopened in Asia on Monday. They used emergency powers to skip the usual shareholder vote. On Sunday 19 March the deal was announced: UBS would pay CHF 3 billion, the government would guarantee up to CHF 9 billion of potential losses on hard-to-value assets, and the central bank would provide up to CHF 100 billion of liquidity. The takeover legally completed on 12 June 2023.
The single most controversial decision was about a type of bond called Additional Tier 1, or AT1. These are also known as contingent convertibles or CoCos. Banks issue them to build a capital buffer; in exchange for higher interest, holders accept that the bonds can be written down or converted to shares if the bank gets into serious trouble. They are riskier than normal bonds and aimed at professional and institutional investors, not typical retail savers.
As part of the rescue, FINMA ordered about CHF 16.5 billion of Credit Suisse AT1 bonds to be written down to zero. That enraged investors because it broke the usual pecking order. In a normal wind-down, shareholders are wiped out before bondholders lose anything. Here, AT1 holders lost everything while shareholders still received UBS shares worth roughly CHF 3 billion. Switzerland argued its AT1 contracts and emergency law allowed this; bondholders argued it was unlawful expropriation.
The shock spread beyond one bank. Europe runs a market worth hundreds of billions in AT1 bonds, and the day after the rescue the European Central Bank, the EU's Single Resolution Board and the European Banking Authority put out a rare joint statement reminding investors that in the eurozone shareholders absorb losses first, before AT1 bonds. The Bank of England said the same about the UK's resolution rules. Both were telling their own bank investors, in effect, that they would not copy what Switzerland had just done. AT1 prices across European banks still fell sharply for a time as investors repriced the risk.
In October 2025 the Swiss Federal Administrative Court agreed with the bondholders. It annulled FINMA's write-down order in a lead case representing around 3,000 bondholders and more than 360 complaints. The court found the emergency provision FINMA relied on was too vague and unconstitutional, that the contractual triggers for a write-down had not actually been met, and that Credit Suisse still met its capital requirements when the order was made. FINMA disagreed and has appealed to the Federal Supreme Court, so as of mid-2026 the ruling is not final and the money has not changed hands. If the bondholders ultimately win, Switzerland could be on the hook for billions, and the global market for these bank bonds will read the precedent closely.
If shareholders and AT1 holders lost so much, where did the value go? A lot of it went to UBS, because it bought a rival for far less than the parts were worth. For the three months after the deal closed, UBS reported a net profit of about US$29 billion, the largest quarterly profit any bank had ever posted. Almost none of that came from running the business better. It was an accounting figure called negative goodwill, the gap between the CHF 3 billion UBS paid and the much higher value of the assets and businesses it absorbed.
That single number tells you how distressed the sale was. Switzerland needed a buyer fast enough to calm markets before they reopened, and UBS was the only one able to do it, so it could negotiate a steep discount and a government backstop. The flip side is that UBS now carries integration costs, legal risk from the AT1 cases, and a much bigger balance sheet to manage. The headline windfall and the long clean-up are two parts of the same deal.
For an outsider the lesson is plain. In a forced sale the price reflects panic and time pressure, not fair value, and the people on the wrong side of that, here the shareholders and AT1 holders, rarely get fair value back. It is the same reason a fire sale of anything, from a house to a bond, fetches less than a calm sale would.
It is the question most savers actually want answered, and the honest reply is: not really, though it rhymed. In 2008 the problem was the assets, banks were stuffed with mortgage securities that turned out to be worth far less than the books said, and the rot was system-wide. Credit Suisse in 2023 was mostly a confidence problem at one badly run bank. Its capital ratios still looked adequate on paper right up to the end; what it lost was trust, and trust is what a bank actually runs on.
The March 2023 wobble did have company. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank had just failed in the United States, and First Republic followed in May, so nervous investors were hunting for the next weak name and found Credit Suisse. But those were separate failures with their own causes, not one contagion spreading from a single rotten asset. Regulators moved within days in every case, which is the main thing that kept 2023 from turning into 2008.
The takeaway for an ordinary investor is steadiness rather than alarm. Markets fall and the occasional bank fails in every cycle, which is normal, not the end of the world. The right response is the boring one: keep an emergency fund in an insured deposit, stay diversified, and resist selling good investments in a panic. If you want the plain-English version of why prices swing, our guide to what a bear market is walks through it.
No. Credit Suisse was rescued, not liquidated, so depositors kept full access to their accounts and the bank's contracts stayed in force. The people who lost money were investors who chose to take risk: shareholders, who saw their stake collapse to a fraction of its former value, and AT1 bondholders, who were wiped out (and may yet be partly restored if the appeal goes their way).
This is the line that matters for understanding bank failures. A deposit is a debt the bank owes you and sits near the front of the queue, backstopped by deposit insurance. Shares and high-yield bank bonds are investments where you accept the risk of loss in return for the chance of higher returns. When a bank fails, that distinction decides who walks away whole. If you want the plain-English version, the liability entry explains why a deposit is money the bank owes you.
Credit Suisse had a real presence here, mainly in private banking and wealth management for the well-off, plus some investment banking. When the takeover completed, the Monetary Authority of Singapore confirmed on 12 June 2023 that the day-to-day operations of both banks' Singapore entities would not be interrupted, customers would keep full access to their accounts, and there was no threat to the stability of Singapore's banking system. The two kept operating under separate licences here, with governance structures set up to manage an orderly integration, and MAS said it stayed in close contact with Switzerland's regulator FINMA, UBS and Credit Suisse throughout.
Singapore was not just a branch office in the story. In 2023 a Singapore court ordered Credit Suisse's local trust arm to pay former Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili about US$743 million over losses in his trust, one of the larger judgments ever against a bank here. Cases like that, and the bank's earlier run of global scandals, are a reminder that even the grandest private-banking name is only as good as its controls, which matters if you ever consider priority or private banking yourself.
For the average working adult in Singapore the direct impact was small, because few of us bank our salary with Credit Suisse. The real lesson is about how your own money is protected. Singapore-dollar deposits, including fixed deposits and money under the Supplementary Retirement Scheme, are insured by the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation up to S$100,000 per depositor per bank. That limit rose from S$75,000 to S$100,000 on 1 April 2024, so older articles quoting the lower figure are out of date.
The protection has clear edges. It covers SGD deposits at a Scheme member, not foreign-currency accounts, structured deposits, unit trusts, shares or investment products, which is why a wealth client's holdings work differently from a saver's deposit. If you hold more than S$100,000 in cash, spreading it across banks keeps it all insured; our guides to the best savings accounts and best fixed deposit rates cover where to put it.
The integration is nearly done. UBS merged the parent companies and the Swiss legal entities in 2024, and in March 2026 it announced it had completed migrating clients, around 1.2 million globally, onto UBS systems. The next and final stage is switching off Credit Suisse's old IT platforms, which UBS expects to substantially finish by the end of 2026. After that the Credit Suisse brand effectively disappears.
The collapse also forced Switzerland to rethink its rules. UBS is now a single giant bank for a small country, with a balance sheet larger than the entire Swiss economy, which makes too-big-to-fail more acute, not less. The Swiss government has proposed tougher capital requirements, with reports pointing to UBS holding tens of billions of dollars more in capital, especially against its foreign subsidiaries. UBS has pushed back hard on the cost, and the details are still being negotiated.
For an ordinary investor in Singapore, the takeaways are practical rather than dramatic. Even a 167-year-old, government-watched bank can fail when it loses trust, so spreading deposits across banks and staying inside the S$100,000 insured limit is sensible. Higher yield always comes with higher risk: AT1 bondholders were paid more precisely because their bonds could be wiped out, and they were. Understanding diversification is part of why one institution's failure should never sink your whole financial plan; the investments guide covers how to build a portfolio that does not depend on any single name.
Years of scandals and losses, including the 2021 Archegos and Greensill blow-ups, a 2022 money-laundering conviction and a CHF 7.3 billion annual loss, drained confidence in the bank. In March 2023, after Silicon Valley Bank failed and Credit Suisse's biggest shareholder ruled out more funding, customers pulled their money fast. The deposit run forced a rescue.
CHF 3 billion (around S$4.4 billion at the time) in an all-share deal announced on 19 March 2023. Credit Suisse shareholders received 1 UBS share for every 22.48 shares they held, worth roughly CHF 0.76 a share. The Swiss government and central bank also backed the deal with up to CHF 9 billion of loss protection and CHF 100 billion of liquidity support.
No. The bank was rescued rather than liquidated, so depositors kept full access to their accounts. The losers were investors who took risk: shareholders, whose stake collapsed, and Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bondholders, who were initially wiped out entirely, about CHF 16.5 billion worth.
AT1 bonds are high-yield bank bonds that can be written down to zero if the bank hits serious trouble, sold mainly to professional investors. FINMA ordered about CHF 16.5 billion of them written off during the rescue, which angered investors because shareholders, who normally lose first, still received UBS shares. In October 2025 a Swiss court ruled the write-down unlawful; FINMA is appealing to the Federal Supreme Court.
Not as an independent bank. UBS merged the parent and Swiss entities in 2024 and completed migrating around 1.2 million clients onto its systems by March 2026. UBS expects to substantially finish decommissioning the old Credit Suisse platforms by end-2026, after which the brand is retired.
MAS confirmed on 12 June 2023 that UBS and Credit Suisse operations in Singapore would continue without interruption, with no risk to Singapore's banking system. Credit Suisse here was mostly private banking for wealthy clients, so the direct impact on ordinary savers was minimal.
Singapore-dollar deposits, including fixed deposits and Supplementary Retirement Scheme money, are insured by the SDIC up to S$100,000 per depositor per bank, a limit raised from S$75,000 on 1 April 2024. Foreign-currency accounts, structured deposits and investment products like shares and unit trusts are not covered.
Bank runs are always possible in principle, but Singapore's three local banks (DBS, OCBC, UOB) are well-capitalised and tightly regulated by MAS, and deposit insurance up to S$100,000 reduces the incentive to panic. Spreading larger cash holdings across banks keeps everything within the insured limit.
Not really. The 2008 crisis was driven by bad assets across the whole banking system, while Credit Suisse in 2023 was mainly a confidence crisis at one poorly run bank whose capital still looked adequate on paper. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic failed around the same time, but for their own reasons. Fast action by regulators stopped a wider chain reaction.
UBS bought Credit Suisse for CHF 3 billion in March 2023. In the quarter after the deal closed, UBS reported a net profit of about US$29 billion, the biggest quarterly profit any bank had ever posted. Almost all of it was an accounting gain called negative goodwill, the gap between the low price UBS paid and the higher value of the businesses it absorbed, not money earned from running the bank.
UBS said in June 2023 it expected to cut a large share of the combined workforce, more than half of Credit Suisse's staff over time, as it merged the two banks and removed overlapping roles. Credit Suisse had around 50,500 employees worldwide at the end of 2022. The integration ran through 2024 to 2026 alongside the client migration.
It is not settled. About CHF 16.5 billion of Credit Suisse AT1 bonds were written to zero. In October 2025 a Swiss court annulled the write-down order in a lead case covering thousands of bondholders, but FINMA has appealed to the Federal Supreme Court, so no money has changed hands. If bondholders ultimately win, the Swiss state could face a bill running into billions; the final amount and timing depend on the appeal.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.