(Berlin) UBS announced on Monday that it had completed the takeover of struggling rival Credit Suisse.
The announcement comes nearly three months after the Swiss government hastily engineered a bailout deal to combine the country’s two largest banks in a bid to preserve Switzerland’s reputation as a global financial center and quell market turbulence.
A statement from the bank said on Monday that “UBS today completed the acquisition of Credit Suisse, achieving an important milestone.”
UBS said last week that it expected to complete the acquisition worth 3 billion Swiss francs (C$4.5 billion) as early as Monday, which will be the last day of trading in shares of the Credit. Switzerland on the Swiss stock exchange. Credit Suisse will also no longer trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
It is a pivotal moment for the two Zurich-based rivals, whose merger has sparked concerns over thousands of expected job cuts, led to rebukes and lawsuits over the terms of the deal and sparked fears about the impact of creating a Swiss megabank that would be too big to fail.
The Swiss government orchestrated the bailout of Credit Suisse over a weekend in March after the lender’s shares tumbled and customers quickly withdrew their money amid fears its collapse could further rattle financial markets world in the wake of the failure of two American banks.
