The deal is not yet set in stone..

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via u/ Wurmholz

Today: Risks for taxpayers could continue

Keller-Sutter: “Risks for taxpayers could continue” In an interview with Swiss radio SRF, Federal Councilor Karin Keller-Sutter discusses the extraordinary bank rescue and potential consequences for the general public. The Swiss government is supporting a major banking merger with an unprecedented 250 billion CHF, causing outrage among citizens as the state guarantees astronomical sums for a large bank that has steered itself towards disaster.

Keller-Sutter acknowledges the public’s concerns and emphasizes that the government is not providing cash, but guarantees. Already, a significant amount in billions has been claimed under the guarantee granted by the government and the National Bank. The exact figures are unknown to her.

Toxic legacy assets within the bank present a high risk. The first 5 billion CHF is borne by UBS as the acquirer, while the state guarantees the next 9 billion CHF. Keller-Sutter admits that the risks for taxpayers could extend further, and the government is discussing the possibility of recouping future costs through profit-sharing with the merged bank.

Keller-Sutter believes the current solution is the best among bad options, as the risks for taxpayers would have been greater if the bank had been nationalized or declared bankrupt. She also criticizes Credit Suisse’s management for putting the country, the Federal Council, and all authorities in an impossible situation. The Swiss government’s rescue plan has met with criticism from political parties, with some calling for the healthy Swiss business of Credit Suisse to be separated from the new “banking monster.”

https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/finanzministerin-zu-cs-rettung-keller-sutter-risiken-fuer-die-steuerzahler-koennten-weitergehen

^{Will add two more links
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Swiss Voters’ Opinion on the CS Takeover According to an SRG survey, the majority of eligible voters are angry and disagree with how the CS takeover was carried out.

Article about polling: SRF 4 News, 24.03.2023, 17:00 Uhr

Last Sunday, federal authorities and the heads of the two major banks held an extraordinary press conference to inform Switzerland and the world that UBS would be taking over troubled Credit Suisse. A representative survey by the GFS Bern research institute on behalf of SRG reveals that the Swiss are predominantly angry and uncertain about this forced merger.

Over half of Swiss voters disagree with how UBS took over CS with federal assistance, and almost no one fully supports the decision. Voters who sympathize with political extremes (Greens, SP, SVP) are more critical than those in the political center (GLP, FDP, Center).

Swiss National Bank (SNB) is considered the most credible actor in the past week, while trust in the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) is significantly lower. Notably, UBS management ranks second, appearing more credible than the Federal Council.

Among the parties, SP is perceived as the most credible, while less trust is attributed to SVP, the Green Liberals, and especially FDP, which all represent economic interests. Most surveyed voters believe that CS officials should now be held accountable (96%) and that more effective measures against exploitation in the banking sector are needed (93%).

The survey results show a broad perception of SP as a credible actor and unanimous criticism directed at management and those responsible for the crisis. The impact of these numbers on the election year remains to be seen.

https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/srg-umfrage-zur-cs-uebernahme-das-haelt-das-schweizer-stimmvolk-von-der-uebernahme-der-cs

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Credit Suisse Shouldn’t Completely Disappear

FDP President Thierry Burkart now demands that the Swiss part of Credit Suisse be separated and made independent, arguing that it would be the best solution for Switzerland.

10vor10, 22.03.2023, 21:50 Uhr

The major bank should become much smaller, Burkart says, in order to preserve as many jobs as possible and create a better competitive situation in the Swiss banking sector for the benefit of Swiss customers, particularly SMEs. Additionally, this step would minimize risk for Switzerland if UBS were to falter.

The SVP also wants to prevent the complete downfall of CS. SVP sets conditions for approving the CHF 109 billion loan, according to Thomas Aeschi. “We need to think about how to restore competition,” he says. The SVP parliamentary group president is confident that Burkart’s proposal would restore competition in the Swiss banking sector.

This idea is not new and is provided for in the Too-Big-To-Fail law, which uses the separation banking system as a model. The individual areas of a bank are independent of each other, so if one area, such as investment banking, gets into trouble, it doesn’t drag down the rest of the bank.

Today, the Greens criticize that the opportunity was missed to take preventative action in time. Gerhard Andrey, a National Council member for the Greens, says something like a separation banking system is needed now, and blames conservative politics for failing to implement it.

The SP goes even further: SP President Cédric Wermuth considers the introduction of a separation banking system but concludes that “Switzerland is too small for such large banks. We need to find a way to minimize the risk in the medium term.”

The big question remains whether the political will for reform will still be present once the initial shock has subsided.

https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/cs-uebernahme-durch-ubs-die-credit-suisse-soll-doch-nicht-ganz-sterben

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These are ChatGPT4 summaries

u/ Exceedingly writes:

Pretty sure Criand showed it’s the large banks / prime brokers acting as the counterparties, so Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and all the other ones who are DTCC members and have trillions in derivatives.

Plus there’s something I didn’t realise, in basic accounting principles you follow the equation Assets = liabilities + equity. This basically means any money into your company has to be transferred into some form of asset, if not it comes straight off equity. If equity goes negative, it’s a huge red flag that will prevent investment and the business would probably go under. Shorts are liabilities on a balance sheet, you take money in and keep an open debt, so Ken would have to use that money to buy some form of asset. But swaps mean his GME shorts can become assets, as it’s the prime brokers holding the short position. Ken has no short exposure from swapped GME shorts and they actually go up in value on assets if GME’s price drops.

And the banks holding the swaps have trillions to weather out a price rise in GME. But that’s why the bank collapses are actually bullish for MOASS, since last year $600b has been pulled out of bank deposits. If that trend keeps up and gets worse, then the FED won’t actually be able to print money to bailout banks. Just say for example bank deposits drops from the current $17.5t to just $7.5t. The Fed would have to print $10t just for banks to be able to keep all their current asset positions open, but printing 200% of the money supply just leads to hyperinflation which bankrupts the US. It just isn’t feasible or sustainable.

It sucks, but bank collapses might be the one true catalyst in this saga (other than DRS).

The honorable u/  itsabittricky writes:

Tl;dr I suspect Unicaja and Evo Banco (Bankinter) are holding gme short swaps due to strange and dramatic fluctuations on their balance sheets, similar annual cash flows, proximity to Granada (which mayoman keeps visiting), Evo Banco being owned by Apollo Global Management.

NOTE there is no smoking gun definitive proof, I just want to post this prediction publicly so if I end up being right I got a receipt for the call.

Lately I’ve been trying to educate myself on income statements/balance sheets/cash flow statements for banks and companies, with a blossoming global banking crisis I figure now is a great time to test my understanding by making predictions on which banks are likely to collapse based on their annual statements. If anyone considers themselves good at reading these kinds of reports please let me know if I got anything fucked up or if there’s other points of information I should review.

I’ve been looking at Unicaja bank annual data and noticed some pretty weird data fluctuations, they had a massive pump in earnings in 2021. So massive the total earnings actually eclipsed their total revenue (for people new to this terminology, earnings is revenue minus expenses, so actual company profit). Here is their 2021 earnings visualized courtesy of yahoo finance:

Ordinarily its impossible to make money in a year in excess of what a bank manages to make in revenue (obviously), this can only occur if the bank receives money from somewhere other than its revenue stream, either it makes extra money off of previous years operations / it sells a bunch of assets / it receives an external cash injection. As you can see from that graph, Unicaja with a 900mil revenue manages to make 1,100mil profit in 2021.

Even more interesting, they seemed to have spent all of that money to the point of losing money in Q4 2022.

Quarterly earnings 2022:

You could attribute this earnings loss on the 100mil drop in revenue for the quarter from the previous month.

Cash flow: <image missing>

Some impressive cash burning. Cash position at start of 2021 6.6bil, end of 2021/start of 2022 21.3bil +223%. Cash position at end of 2022 4.6bil – 78%. So it looks to me like Unicaja received a cash of injection of 10-15bil which was spent in a year.

Here is another bank that had a similar boom in earnings 2021 Evo Banco aka Bankinter.

Approx 1.3bil in earnings off 1.55bil in revenue.

What do these banks have in common, apart from similar annual cash booms and declines? Both banks are headquartered in the South of Spain Andalucia (Unicaja in Malaga and Evo Banco in Madrid) which Mayoman has been visiting a lot these past few weeks, check u Bellweirboy posts on Mayoforce track, Mayoman is there right now, was there Tuesday last week March 14, Saturday 25 Feb, and has visited on many other occasions these past two years. It’s possible its a favorite holiday destination Granada is a beautiful city and he just wants to go nuts before the boom but I do not believe he would visit this often these past months, the finance world is too crazy for anyone to be on holiday and my impression of Mayoman is he will struggle until the very end.

Another interesting point of note, Evo Banco is owned by Apollo Global Management. If you’re curious about their involvement in this whole saga I recommend having a read through u BadassTrader’s Billionaire Boys Club series, specifically the Apollo Missions entries. Its a fascinating glimpse into that big old club we’re not apart of (fuck they club the people in it are trash).

The following is straight data from Annual Statements for Unicaja. I’m focusing on 2021 Q2 to Q3 as that’s when the dramatic fluctuations occurred, and 2022 Q4 to give you an idea of where they’re at on these data points today. Note that there wasn’t any huge movement in these balance sheet entries prior to Q3 2021.

Cash and balances at Central banks: 8,855mil (21Q2) to 15,376mil (21Q3) +74%. Now 4,662 (22Q4) -70%

Financial Assets at Amortized Cost (Loans and advances to customers): 27,939mil (21Q2) to 55,386mil (21Q3) +98%. Now 55,316mil -0.1%.

If you’re wondering what amortized cost means I’m also wondering. “You can say that the total cost a business has recorded on its balance for the purchase of a particular asset is the amortized cost of the asset.” https://incorporated.zone/amortized-cost/

So, the price at purchase. Reminds me of this fair value shit. “Fuck our clients are going to skin us alive if they find out these assets we bought with their money is down 90%, lets just record it at amortized cost which just so happens to be the price that doesn’t reflect -90%.” Or “holy fucking shit we shorted this asset at $1 and now its fucking $80 shit fuck shit.”

Investments in joint ventures and associates: 368mil (21Q2) to 1,030mil (21Q3) +180%. Now 976mil -5%.

Tax assets: 2,770mil (21Q2) to 4,760mil (21Q3) +71%. Now 5,063mil +6%.

Financial liabilities held for trading & at fair value through P&L: 24mil (21Q2) to 29mil (21Q3) +20%. Now 53mil +82%.

This fair value price could be $1 for a market value of $100.

Financial liabilities held at amortized cost: 59,916mil (21Q2) to 99,616mil (21Q3) +66%. Now 88,937mil -11%.

Customer deposits: 48,691mil (21Q2) to 82,041mil (21Q3) +68%.

Customer deposits and Loans and advances to customers sections really got me scratching my head, cos retail has barely moved. Retail deposits 91,652mil (21Q2) to 94,726mil (21Q3) now 90,081mil (22Q4). Same lack of movement for retail loans and credit. So all this balance sheet movement was completely unrelated to retail. Wonder who these customer deposits and loans represent.

Other issued securities: 366mil (21Q2) to 1,916mil (21Q3) to 3,329mil (22Q4) +810% over the 18 month period. This is a huge jump.

What do all these numbers mean? I got no idea. The annual reports do not detail exactly what securities/assets/derivatives/liabilities are being traded or held, it could be anything. Maybe these movements are nothing out of the ordinary and I’m just regarded.

I’m pretty confident when I say that something big hit Unicaja’s books in Q3 2021 unrelated to retail and it made big waves.

Some data for Evo Banco aka Bankinter, 2020 Q4 to 2021 Q1:

Financial Assets held for trading: 2.1bil (20Q4) to 4.5bil (21Q1) +110%.

Financial Liabilities held for trading: 1.3bil (20Q4) to 3.4bil (21Q1) +146%.

Derivatives Hedge Accounting ASSETS: 406mil (20Q4) to 303mil (21Q1) -25%.

Derivatives Hedge Accounting LIABILITIES: 520mil (20Q4) to 320mil (21Q1) -38%.

2021Q4 to 2022Q4 (now)

Derivatives Hedge Accounting ASSETS: 216mil to 479mil +122%

Derivatives Hedge Accounting LIABILITIES: 277mil to 421mil + 51%

Non-current assets and disposal groups classified as held for sale 106mil to 262mil +147%

Other financial liabilities 2.1bil to 3.4bil +61%

Accumulated other comprehensive income 115mil to -129mil -212%

Again, no dramatic movements for Evo Banco retail numbers for the periods.

These banks are making crazy moves. Maybe it ain’t related to gme, but these do not look like healthy balance sheet decisions to me. But then again, who the fuck am I but a humble ape?

Unicaja finance reports: https://www.unicajabanco.com/en/inversores-y-accionistas/informacion-economico-financiera/informes-financieros Bankinter finance reports: https://www.bankinter.com/webcorporativa/en/shareholders-investors/financial-information/quarterly-reports/2022