ZURICH, Jan 14 (Reuters) – UBS (UBSG.S) has little interest in shopping for fellow Swiss lender Credit score Suisse (CSGN.S), the financial institution’s Chairman Colm Kelleher stated in a interview printed on Saturday.
The previous Morgan Stanley (MS.N) president stated he was targeted on natural development reasonably than acquisitions and increasing its enterprise in the US as he dominated out any transfer to purchase his financial institution’s embattled cross-town rival.
“We’ve got no need to purchase Credit score Suisse,” Kelleher informed the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
“There are at all times eventualities, however none which might be convincing,” he stated when requested if there have been any conditions the place a UBS takeover of Credit score Suisse made sense.
The previous chairmen of Credit score Suisse and UBS supported a merger between the 2 banks, and held talks within the first half of 2020, Swiss media reported two years in the past.
The discussions finally lapsed, the media stories stated, and each Urs Rohner and Axel Weber have since left their roles at Credit score Suisse and UBS respectively.
Each banks declined to touch upon the merger story on the time. Kelleher succeeded Weber in April final 12 months.
“Our strategic message is: no surprises; natural development; choose UBS by the numbers, by the U.S. enterprise, by profitability,” he informed the newspaper. “In my expertise such a message could be very nicely acquired by institutional shareholders.”
Kelleher stated UBS had not benefited a lot from the troubles at Credit score Suisse, which has seen sharp outflows as rich purchasers turned their again on the financial institution after a collection of heavy losses and scandals.
“We’ve got checked what has flowed to us,” Kelleher stated. “We suspect the most important a part of the outflows went to worldwide banks.”
Reporting by John Revill, enhancing by Deepa Babington
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