Swiss parliament’s lower house voted against approving 109 billion francs ($120 billion) in government guarantees for UBS Group AG’s takeover of Credit Suisse Group AG — a symbolic show of popular and political discontent with the deal.
(Bloomberg) — Swiss parliament’s lower house voted against approving 109 billion francs ($120 billion) in government guarantees for UBS Group AG’s takeover of Credit Suisse Group AG — a symbolic show of popular and political discontent with the deal.
In total, 102 lawmakers in the lower house cast their ballot against the motion, 71 were in favor and two abstained in the vote, held just before midnight in the Swiss capital Bern.
“If climate was a bank, the government would already have saved it,” said Balthasar Glaettli, president of the Greens, who rejected the bill.
Parliament doesn’t have the power to stop the takeover negotiated last month, as the government already got approval from a small group of senior lawmakers — the so-called financial delegation — on the weekend the deal was hashed out. That six-member body has the right to sign off on urgent fiscal matters on behalf of parliament.
Still, the rejection stands in contrast to the upper house which had given its green light earlier on Tuesday. It highlights the anger among lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum ahead of national elections later this year. The bill will now be sent back to the upper house for further debate.
Those deliberations will resume at 8:30 a.m. local time in Bern, with the lower house meeting again at 11:45 a.m.
Here’s how the situation might be resolved: Before rejecting the guarantees, the lower house had added provisions that seek to adjust the banking law to limit the risks to the state from systemically relevant banks. The lower house wants the upper to support this stipulation. Once that happens, the lower house could sign off on the deal.
Still, the standoff is largely symbolic. The government had said that “if parliament refuses subsequent approval, it will be tantamount to a political reprimand for the financial delegation, with no legal effect.”
The lower house’s rebuff of the government-brokered deal came despite repeated speeches by senior government ministers that the UBS takeover was the best of a limited number of options. Swiss President Alain Berset said earlier on Tuesday that Credit Suisse’s “negative spiral” spurred his government into action and that together with the Swiss National Bank and the country’s banking regulator had in “a decisive manner to restore confidence.”
The politicians disagreed.
(Updates with lawmaker in third paragraph)
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