UBS Group AG Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti said Switzerland should have broader powers to sanction bank executives as it seeks to reduce the likelihood of lenders failing like Credit Suisse did earlier this year.
The country needs to “strengthen the accountability of senior management,” Ermotti said in a speech in Zurich on Wednesday evening. “It should be easier for the bank, or the regulator, to go after people who demonstrated great negligence.”
The comments are the strongest intervention on regulation by Ermotti since he took the helm at UBS shortly after the lender agreed to take over Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue engineered by the government. The Swiss bank’s downfall shocked the country’s authorities and raised doubts on whether current rules to prevent bank runs are robust enough.
In his speech, Ermotti said Credit Suisse’s demise was an “entirely idiosyncratic” event, stemming from “repeated risk management and operational failures” that caused high executive turnover and eroded management accountability.
He also said that introducing higher capital requirements for banks would be the wrong lesson to draw from the Credit Suisse failure. Instead, regulators should adapt liquidity requirements to “the era of digital banking.”
The rapid pace of deposit outflows at Credit Suisse at the beginning of this year took many supervisors by surprise. Several policymakers have since said that assumptions underlying current liquidity requirements must be adapted for an era in which deposit holders can move their money from one account to the next with a few taps on their mobile phones.
