How Credit Suisse’s demise strengthens Switzerland’s place in global finance

As Switzerland digested the news of Credit Suisse’s takeover by rival UBS, the headlines were unequivocally bleak. The deal is a “historic scandal,” wrote the daily Tages-Anzeiger. It marks the “end of an era,” according to Switzerland’s public broadcaster SRF. The country’s leading daily, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, found even stronger words: “A zombie is gone, but a monster has been created.” read one headline.

It is of course quite literally the end of an era when a 167-year-old banking institution that has been near-synonymous with Swiss finance ceases to exist as an independent entity. And there are important, as-of-yet unanswered questions about the deal brokered by the Swiss government, and its implications.