Good evening,

Today will be remembered as the day that UBS swallowed its Swiss banking peer Credit Suisse.

In a deal that no one could have seen coming just a week ago, things moved at lightning speed over the weekend as Credit Suisse battled waning confidence from customers and investors.

There’s plenty of early grumblings, stretching from hybrid investors’ wipeout, shareholders’ haircut, generous government support – and of course bankers’ unpaid bonuses.

In Street Talk tonight, we tune in to Credit Suisse’s local bosses’ address to their ranks as they came into work on Monday, less than an hour after its shotgun marriage with the UBS was announced.

From what we hear, the local heads were at pains to drill into their staff that none of what had happened over the weekend was their fault.

Fortunately, the Aussie bankers got paid their bonuses last week, even though there should be some sleepless nights ahead on incentives trapped in deferred shares and the slicing and dicing that UBS’s big bosses would have in their minds.

Lastly on Credit Suisse, we look at its institutional equities market share. The unit was well known (and well used) among fundies, and it would be interesting to see if they make the move to UBS or scatter to other big brokers in the market.

Elsewhere, Crescent’s ASX-listed Australian Clinical Labs perplexed the market with a bid for Healius, the Australian Shareholders Association was brewing up trouble at AMP’s AGM, and Highbury was shopping around a stake in Ochre Health.

Happy reading,
Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
Street Talk editors