Top Swiss banks close bad year with big deals

Geneva  - UBS and Credit Suisse, Switzerland largest banks, made two large deals Wednesday to close off what were bad years for both.

UBS AG announced in a statement that it has sold approximately 3.4 billion of its shares in Bank of China Ltd. to institutional investors.

The second largest bank, Credit Suisse, said it agreed to sell part of its Global Investors asset management business to Aberdeen Asset Management in return for stock worth 361 million dollars, giving it an almost 25 per cent holding in the company.

The sale comes with 70 billion dollars of assets under management.

Both banks have been badly affected by the financial crisis. UBS saw major withdrawals, and posted nearly 50 billion dollars in losses and write-downs and had to receive a bail-out worth over 58 billion dollars from the government and the central bank.

Credit Suisse took third quarter losses of over 2 billion dollars. (dpa)

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