Credit Suisse’s agony: Sinks 12% after asking for bailout

There seems no end to the agony Credit Suisse. Shares in Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, which requested a public bailout of 50,000 million euros to deal with its liquidity problems, were down nearly 12 percent by this time Friday on the Zurich stock exchange.

The hemorrhaging of the financial unit, which was cornered in the markets last Wednesday by the crisis of American banks, continues. The authorities have not yet clarified what will happen to the company after it receives aid, and there are still doubts about a possible takeover by a major rival: UBS. The Swiss bank would not be interested in the operation, according to financial sources disclosed to Bloomberg. And that once again punished Credit Suisse on the stock market.

Another alternative solution that has been put on the table is to split up the group’s units to be sold separately, thus shedding its investment side.

The one who doesn’t come back is the one First Republic Bank. The entity’s share price, which received a $30 trillion injection yesterday from JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services and five other banks to survive, is falling ahead of the open Wall Street 10%, which means that investors are still fleeing and that the banking crisis is still not under control.

Another sign that raised a certain nervousness is the holding of an extraordinary session of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), where the state of the financial markets and the European banking sector is considered after the recent turmoil.