According to four persons with direct knowledge of the issue, UBS has made a bid to purchase Credit Suisse, as reported by the Financial Times.
The agreement values Credit Suisse at about $7 billion less than its market value at Friday’s close, according to the Financial Times, and may be signed as early as Sunday night. According to The Financial Times, UBS proposed to pay 0.25 Swiss francs ($0.27) per share of UBS stock.
The price of Credit Suisse’s stock on Friday was 1.86 Swiss francs.
Earlier, BlackRock said that it had no plans to acquire Credit Suisse. Earlier this week, Credit Suisse shares had surged after the Swiss central bank agreed to loan the bank up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion) to bolster confidence in the country’s second-biggest lender and blunt concerns about the international financial system following the collapse of two U.S. banks.
Central banks in the U.S. and Europe have moved quickly to restore confidence in the banking system after last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history. U.S. authorities had earlier said they would guarantee all of the deposits of California-based Silicon Valley Bank and the smaller Signature Bank of New York, making sure people wouldn’t be hurt by the collapse of the banks.