Credit Suisse has had a disastrous year. The bank has long been plagued by all kinds of troubles and scandals. The fact that the SEC is now also questioning the accuracy of the annual report points to even more problems at the bank, according to Rotteveel. “This turns out to be enough to delay publication and, as you can imagine, this has hit Credit Suisse investors, clients and other lenders hard again.”
It is seldom that a supervisor sounds the alarm while the annual report is already printing, says Rotteveel. ‘Of course there are often questions from regulators about these kinds of issues. This is a question that has been going on for some time, it concerns a point that was already mentioned in the previous annual report. They usually go into conclave with each other and sort it out, but apparently they are so insecure at Credit Suisse that they dare not publish it because of all the problems that are already happening.’
‘Technical adjustment’
Credit Suisse itself says in a reply that this is a “technical adjustment”. “But then a technical adjustment of 13 billion euros,” explains Rotteveel. ‘That’s 1.7 percent of the balance sheet total, but this is perhaps again about risk management, which has already been the subject of a lot of discussion. It is a question of whether items have been adequately accounted for and whether loans and incoming money have been canceled against each other.’
Credit Suisse’s share price fell today to 2.5 Swiss francs, its lowest level ever. According to Rotteveel, this in turn has consequences for the bank itself. “Because with no interest from lenders you get a worse rating again, it becomes more difficult to collect money and more customers walk away again.”