Swiss regulators demand UBS add $20B in safety reserves to prevent taxpayer-funded bailout

Banking giant UBS was ordered Wednesday to set aside an extra $20 billion in safety reserves in Switzerland as the government there moves to tighten rules aimed at preventing another taxpayer-funded bailout like the 2023 Credit Suisse collapse.Ministers want the Zurich-based lender to keep the new rainy day fund to cover any possible future losses in its extensive overseas operations.Swiss authorities did not back down in their ask that UBS must keep enough cash on its books to fully fund all of its foreign subsidiaries, up from current rules that state they have 60% for those units now.The blueprint insists UBS must fully back every dollar it invests overseas with the highest quality untouchable reserves in Switzerland to shield the Swiss economy from risks created by the bank’s giant global footprint.Swiss finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter slapped down claims made by some activist shareholders that the changes could force the financial giant to move its headquarters to the US.“If we get into a tricky situation with a bank of UBS’s size, how is Switzerland meant to handle that?” Keller-Sutter said, calling the US “a completely different market.”She said the company’s balance sheet was at least 1.5 times larger than the Swiss economy, but insisted the new rules would not drive the firm out of the country.“I see absolutely no reason in this regulation for a bank like UBS to leave Switzerland.None at all,” the former president of the Alpine nation adde, while noting that such threats from the company are “not new.”The Post exclusively reported in September that its leadership had held talks with senior Trump administration offiicials about shifting its headquarters across the Atlantic.“If the bank were to move to the US, its large Swiss business would be considered a foreign business in its home country and would likely face stricter capital requirements in Switzerland,” top Swiss business daily Neue Zuericher Zeitung wrote in an editoria...