UBS threatens to leave Switzerland; Switzerland, smaller than UBS's balance sheet, considers moving inside UBS
The bank's balance sheet is bigger than the national economy. Bern has drawn the only logical conclusion: the smaller party packs.
ZURICH. Last month the Council of States, the upper house of the Swiss parliament, backed a plan that would force UBS to hold an extra 16 billion dollars of capital. The lower house has yet to vote, but the bank’s chairman has already conceded that UBS could reconsider its Swiss base. There is one complication: UBS’s balance sheet is significantly larger than the Swiss economy. If someone has to move, officials in Bern concluded, it should be the smaller party.
Sources say the Federal Council, Switzerland’s seven-member collective government, has therefore applied to open a branch office inside UBS. The four-page application, filed in three official languages, is currently in the queue behind a Singapore family office.
“We’d be happy to take the Confederation, provided it backs 90% of its value with hard capital, like any other foreign unit,” said a spokesman who asked to remain solvent. “So far it is offering Gruyère and neutrality. Neither counts as tier one.”
The 26 cantons will be booked as subsidiaries. Zurich and Geneva get priority-client status; Uri, a small mountain canton, has been classified as a non-core asset, to be sold off by 2029.
The seat of government will follow. Paradeplatz, Zurich’s banking square, becomes the new Bundesplatz, and the seven federal councillors will receive citizens at counter 3, by appointment only.
At press time, the finance ministry was fretting over the 10-billion-dollar exit tax floated by analysts, which Switzerland may now have to pay to leave Switzerland.
Le Cardon is a satirical paper. This article is fiction.