UBS’s new volume of risk?: National Bank President Holzmann: “It can be dangerous, but it doesn’t have to be dangerous”

With the emergency acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS, a banking giant with total assets of about €1,600 billion has been created in Switzerland. This is more than double the annual Swiss economic output (most recently around €775 billion). Is this not a dangerous quantity that, when imbalanced, ultimately entails uncontrollable risks? Robert Holzmann, Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and member of the Council of the European Central Bank, did not want to commit to this Monday evening on ORF ZiB2: “It can be dangerous, but it doesn’t have to be dangerous.” This was a political decision, and among the ten largest banks in the world there are institutions larger than the new UBS.

But for him, this situation around Credit Suisse clearly would not have existed if not for the recent developments in the United States, where several regional banks, including Silicon Valley Bank, have collapsed. “Tension from the United States spilled over into Europe.” In Holzmann’s view, this is not a sign that the European banking system is unstable: “It does not mean that the banking system is in bad shape.”

Robert Holzmann, President of the Austrian National Bank at ZiB2: