“You are going to team up with UBS and will announce it on the Sunday night before Asia opens. There is no other choice.”

It was a conversation that the “holy trinity” of Zurich, as the Financial Times called them, relayed last Wednesday to chairman Axel Lehmann and Credit Suisse managing director Ulrich Koerner.

The Swiss bailout troika included politician, finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter, economist and president of the Swiss National Bank Thomas Jordan and mathematician and head of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) Urban Ungern.

All three took action after a resounding “no” from Amr al-Quderi, chairman of Credit Suisse’s biggest investor, the National Bank of Saudi Arabia, who responded with a resounding “no way” when asked if he would provide additional money to bail out the bank. , even after the “injection” of 50 billion euros of the Swiss central bank.

The three institutions, in collaboration with UBS chairman Colm Kelleher – an Irishman who prepared to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by drinking beer and watching an England-Ireland rugby match, according to the Financial Times – set the stage for as early as last week.

In fact, a source from Credit Suisse said in the same report that “we were all together in Zurich and it was clear that the government would be pushing for a solution one way or another by Monday morning, at any cost, to protect Swiss national interest and more generally plan, banking interests on a global basis”.

The pressure was on everyone, especially the Swiss finance minister, who took office less than three months ago. Karin Keller-Sutter had to not only save Credit Suisse, but also make a series of deals with her colleagues and regulators in Europe and the US. The Americans and the French, according to the Financial Times, “squeezed” the Swiss minister.

But who is in the “troika” of rescuers who caught the worst?

Politician, mathematician and economist

59 year old Karin Keller-Sutter he has been in politics for 30 years. He belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party of Switzerland and ewas President of the Council of States/Cantons in the period 2017-2018. Studied political science and pedagogy.

He was born in 1963 in the canton of St. Gallen. Prior to her election to the Federal Council, she held various positions: Chairman of the Board of Pensimo Management AG, Chairman of the Board of Pensimo Investment Fund, Vice Chairman of the St. Gallen Foundation for International Research, member of the Board of Directors. insurance group Bâloise and pension fund ASGA in St. Gallen, president of the Swiss Retail Federation and board member of the Swiss Employers’ Association. Between 2012 and 2016, he was also a member of the board of the NZZ media group. After her election to the Federal Council in 2018, Karin Keller-Sutter resigned from all these positions, according to the official website of the Swiss Ministry of Finance.

OUR urban anger, born in 1965, has been the CEO of FINMA since November 1, 2021. Since 1994, he has worked in prominent positions in the private sector, mainly in the insurance and investment industry. He holds a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University and a master’s degree in theoretical physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

Keine Beisshemung: #FINMA director #UrbanAngern im interview mit der #NZZ https://t.co/QqesKn86qa pic.twitter.com/pyXYFl1f5p

— Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht FINMA (@FINMA_media) February 10, 2022

OUR Thomas Jordan, who is 60 today, has been President of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) since April 2012. During his tenure, he led the central bank through a phase of ultra-expansive monetary policy with the world’s lowest interest rate and monetary intervention to stop the strengthening of the franc, a safe haven in times of market stress, according to Bloomberg. The SNB started raising interest rates in June and ended negative interest rates in September. Jordan studied economics and business at the University of Bern, earning a Ph.D. He has been working in the NSS since 1997.

In 2012, when he was named president of the SNB to succeed Philipp Hildebrand, the Financial Times wrote: “Humble and unassuming, last year he rose to public prominence. [σ.σ. 2011] as the bank’s representative on the Swiss government committee that drafted new regulations for UBS and Credit Suisse, the two Swiss banks were deemed “too big to fail”.