- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
Senior leadership at UBS acknowledged the significant work ahead of Switzerland’s largest bank as it begins preparing to absorb the country’s second-largest bank, Credit Suisse.
“Both banks have to be continued and integrated in the coming years,” said Lukas Gähwiler, UBS’s vice chairman of the board of directors, during the bank’s annual general meeting of shareholders Wednesday. “This is a Herculean task that will need more rather than fewer people in the short run.”
UBS announced March 19 it would purchase Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $3.3 billion) after the latter institution was deemed at risk of becoming illiquid as depositors raced to withdraw their funds from the bank. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) stepped in to help coordinate the merger once it determined recent initiatives undertaken by Credit Suisse to overhaul its risk management practices and restore its reputation weren’t enough to restore confidence in the bank.
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UBS announced Christian Bluhm will remain in his role as group chief risk officer “for the foreseeable future” as the Swiss bank grapples with integrating Credit Suisse into its business.
Except for Credit Suisse’s demise, Europe has so far largely patted itself on the back for preventing further contagion in the banking sector following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank in the United States.
Banking regulators defended their supervisory actions and pledged to find answers as to what went wrong when discussing the factors leading to the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank before the Senate Banking Committee.
A Bank of England report warned of private equity risk management deficiencies as interest rates remain stagnant, with international coordination important.
Compliance departments at financial institutions must become more involved in ensuring their firm’s operational resiliency to address emerging risks, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in its semi-annual risk perspective.
Compliance has been “sleeping on” artificial intelligence, two panelists discussed at Compliance Week’s Women in Compliance Summit. The profession should be positioned to lead on AI governance at the business level.
