Credit Suisse raises 10 billion francs, reports massive loss

ZURICH: Switzerland's second largest bank Credit Suisse said today it had raised 10 billion Swiss francs of new capital, as it posted a 1.3-billion-franc third quarter loss.

"Credit Suisse has raised tier one capital from a small group of major global investors, the largest participant being the Qatar Holding LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority," a bank statement said.

The capital hike would see the bank's so-called tier one ratio - a measure of capital adequacy - raised to 13.7 per cent from 10.4 per cent at the end of the third quarter.

The bank's chief executive officer Brady Dougan said "unprecedented market disruption in September" had led to losses in the investment bank unit.

"Our investment bank was impacted by the volatile conditions and the result reflects further write-downs in our leveraged finance and structured products businesses and other losses resulting from the exceptionally adverse trading conditions in September," he said.

Credit Suisse had plunged into a net loss of 2.148 billion Swiss francs in the first quarter, but managed a profit of 1.215 billion francs in the second.

In all, it has written down about 10 billion Swiss francs worth of assets since the credit crisis began. The Swiss government also injected six billion francs into banking giant UBS, while the central bank loaned it 54 billion dollars to transfer its non-liquid assets into a separate fund.

The fresh capital, equivalent USD 5.2 billion, would give the Swiss government a 9.3 per cent stake in the bank, one of the worst-hit by the global financial crisis.