By Chiara Elisei
LONDON (Reuters) -Holders of credit insurance linked to Credit Suisse bonds will not get a payout after a committee that adjudicates on disputes in the derivatives market said on Wednesday the bank’s state-engineered merger with UBS did not constitute a credit event.
The Swiss bank in March was taken over by UBS in a state-assisted deal that wiped out Credit Suisse’s $17 billion Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bondholders.
“A Governmental Intervention Credit Event had not occurred,” the EMEA Credit Derivatives Determination Committee (CDDC) said in a statement on its website, responding to a question from an investor last week.
The CDDC said it had come to the conclusion following an examination of the ranking clauses for the AT1 bonds listed in the request made by the investor.
The investor said the AT1 bonds were pari passu, in other words ranking at the same level, with the reference bond underlying the CDS contracts, which included a subordinated bond that matured in 2020.
But the committee’s view was that holders of the 2020 bonds were priority creditors compared with AT1 bondholders.
A panel of eleven finance companies, including Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs as well as Elliot Investment Management and PIMCO came to a unanimous decision, the CDDC statement said.
Credit Suisse, which is still listed as a member of the EMEA CDDC on the group’s website, was not listed as having taken part in the decision.
(Reporting by Chiara Elisei, editing by Karin Strohecker and Jane Merriman)
