2023-05-09 19:43:15
The FINMA, the Financial Markets Supervisory Authority, will not enter into the matter on the complaints filed by a hundred holders of Credit Suisse bonds, specific bonds whose value has been purely and simply reduced to zero. Lawyer Carlo Lombardini returned to this decision on the RTS program Forum.
FINMA’s decision came at the start of the week. The proceeding remains inflexible and Credit Suisse bondholders will have no further explanations. Worth 16 billion francs, these bonds were converted overnight into equity and therefore lost all value for their holders.
The supervisory authority considers this to be an internal bank matter. “Credit Suisse is the sole recipient of the instruction for these obligations, excluding third parties,” she clears.
In the loan conditions, there was a clause which provided for the possibility of converting these bonds into equity if necessary. The holders of these titles were therefore warned. Not only are the appellants therefore not harmed, considers the supervisory authority, but they also do not have the capacity to appeal against this decision.
“FINMA does not want to examine the merits of the case”
Carlo Lombardini, a lawyer in Geneva, represents certain holders of these bonds. Asked on Tuesday in the RTS program Forum, he explains that this decision by FINMA does not surprise him. “After the dumpling that was made, it is clear that the Supervisory Authority does not want to examine the merits of the case. It is consistent with their strategy,” he said.
One would expect to receive these kinds of decisions in countries like Venezuela, and not in a country where there is supposedly legal certainty.
He said he was shocked all the same, believing that “we would expect to receive this kind of decision in countries like Venezuela – a particularly authoritarian regime – and not in a country where legal certainty allegedly reigns”.
“When we say to holders of 16 billion bonds: ‘yes, we put them at zero, but that does not concern you’, there is still a rather comical, even grotesque side”, pleads the lawyer.
“From the moment the Federal Council had decided, illegally and unconstitutionally, to marry Credit Suisse to UBS, from then on, everyone did not care about the rules of law”, he adds even.
Before the Federal Administrative Court
For Carlo Lombardini, FINMA’s refusal to enter into the matter is “incomprehensible” in view of the rich existing case law on this subject. Old legal decisions that the lawyer intends to assert in his appeal to the Federal Administrative Court, a case law “that FINMA will probably discover on this occasion and that it would have done better to read between March 16 and 19”, further castigates the lawyer.
The dispute will therefore go up to the Federal Administrative Court. These actions will be added to the complaints already filed directly with this Court, in particular on the grounds that the bondholders were treated less favorably than the shareholders in the context of this takeover, which is contrary to the law in force. .
The principle of the separation of powers unfortunately seems to me to be singularly violated in our beautiful State.
The appeal to the Federal Administrative Court is therefore the next step in this case, because the lawyer has “the mandate to go all the way”. “It would be desirable for the federal courts to restore some order to the principle of the separation of powers, which unfortunately seems to me to be singularly violated in our beautiful State”, he concludes.
These claims will be accompanied by requests for compensation. The future will tell us to what extent the Federal Administrative Court will respond in favor or not.
>> Listen to Carlo Lombardini’s full intervention in Forum:
Radio topic: sb
Adaptation web: Julien Furrer
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