{"id":195,"date":"2008-02-19T15:59:29","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T15:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-finance-zone.co.uk\/uncategorized\/credit-suisse-traders-suspended\/"},"modified":"2008-02-19T15:59:29","modified_gmt":"2008-02-19T15:59:29","slug":"credit-suisse-traders-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/2008\/02\/19\/credit-suisse-traders-suspended\/","title":{"rendered":"Credit Suisse traders suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Credit Suisse has suspended a “small number” of traders suspected of inflating the value of mortgage-backed bond investments by $2.85bn (\u00c2\u00a31.5bn).<\/strong> <\/font><\/p>\n

The Swiss firm blamed pricing errors for its actions, which would cut $1bn from expected first-quarter profit.<\/p>\n

It also blamed “adverse market conditions” for the write-down.<\/p>\n

\"creditsuisse.jpg\"The news comes as confidence in the global banking sector is at its lowest ebb in years, hurt further by a trading scandal at France’s Societe Generale. <\/p>\n

The disclosure came after an internal review, which the bank said was continuing.<\/p>\n

In a conference call, the firm’s chief executive, Brady Dougan, blamed most of the losses on negative sentiment in the market.<\/p>\n

But he also pointed to “late marking” – the failure to update pricing within the required time limit to reflect market movement.<\/p>\n

He declined to comment on whether the traders involved had kept their positions inflated to bump up their bonuses, but would not rule out fraud.<\/p>\n

Tuesday’s revelations by Credit Suisse stunned many analysts because they came a week after the Zurich-based firm posted its results for the last three months for 2007.<\/p>\n

At the time, it reported minimal damage from the US sub-prime crisis, with losses of 2bn Swiss francs ($1.8bn; \u00c2\u00a3938m) last year, less than it had originally expected.<\/p>\n

“This is a disaster. This could be the tip of the iceberg,” said Helvea analyst Peter Thorne.<\/p>\n

Mr Dougan said there was “no indication” that Credit Suisse would have to restate 2007 earnings, which it reported last week, but he added, “That is under review.”<\/p>\n

He also said the bank was profitable for the quarter to date and that it was “extremely well capitalised”.<\/p>\n

Bear Stearns analyst Christopher Wheeler was sceptical.<\/p>\n

He said: “Given the tentative nature of the announcement, it is not certain that we have heard the last of this issue.”<\/p>\n

“Those who thought that certain banks such as Credit Suisse were ‘out of the woods’ should exercise caution,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit Suisse has suspended a “small number” of traders suspected of inflating the value of mortgage-backed bond investments by $2.85bn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companies","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}