By Niket Nishant and Saeed Azhar
(Reuters) -Bank of America has doubled the size of its banking team in Switzerland, its CEO said, seizing on a potential opportunity to gain market share amid a shakeup in the Swiss banking market after the demise of Credit Suisse.
Switzerland has pledged to put in place stricter banking rules since the 2023 collapse of Credit Suisse, which was taken over by rival UBS. At the center of the overhaul are plans to make UBS hold more capital to prevent another crisis.
“Recently, with the disruption that went on in Switzerland, we added some bankers to build our team there,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told a conference on Wednesday, adding the size of the team doubled “pretty quickly.”
He did not disclose the total number of bankers in Switzerland, but in an interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung late last year, Moynihan indicated the bank wants to serve Swiss businesses ranging in size from small companies to global corporations.
Other foreign lenders including France’s BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup are among those increasing staffing and courting smaller companies that form the bedrock of the Swiss economy.
The Swiss government has said it wants stricter capital requirements for UBS and its three biggest peers – PostFinance, Raiffeisen and Zürcher Kantonalbank.
In December, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said tougher regulation across the board could weaken the nation’s financial sector against competition. He said on Monday he does not expect “much clarity until May.”
BofA’s international business is overseen by Bernard Mensah, who also heads Merrill Lynch International.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Tasim Zahid, Lananh Nguyen and Chris Reese)
