Forget SVB, Credit Suisse is the real thing – a SIFI that could bring it all down – and that is perhaps why the world his pet rabbit decided to buy some counterparty risk protection on the Swiss bank…

Source: Bloomberg

Credit Suisse has been a known issue for years, however, today’s rather public refusal by the Saudis to throw any more money at the Swiss bank, could have been the straw on this camel’s back, sending the stock to new record lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Credit Suisse ADRs (which traded after the late-day statement from SNB and Finma) shows the stock was not impressed…

Charles Gasparino tweeted the following, which seemed to sum things up well:

Breaking from a Credit Suisse employee: “panic, meltdowns, people crying.”

European bank stocks crashed 7% today, down 15% in the last week, erasing all the gains YTD…

Source: Bloomberg

And European credit risk soared broadly…

Source: Bloomberg

German 2Y, 5Y, & 30Y bond yields crashed by their most on record today…

Source: Bloomberg

As market expectations for The ECB tomorrow plummeted from a 100% chance of 50bps a week ago to just barely pricing in a 25bps hike…

Source: Bloomberg

And that derisking spread around the world, dragging US stocks and bond yields down, dollar and gold higher…

European banks. pic.twitter.com/TJMq25MXKR

— Harbinger (@harbinger) March 15, 2023

US equities plunged around 2% on the Credit Suisse contagion, but then well after EU closed, headline suggesting a statement from Swiss authorities prompted a rapid buying-panic, lifting Nasdaq green. But when the statement hit , it was disappointing and stocks faded back into the red with Small Caps the biggest losers (lots of small financials)…

The S&P 500 briefly went negative year-to-date before the Swiss support headlines

Late in the day saw 0DTE traders pushing negative against the rally…

Regional Banks extended recent losses today (despite the bounce back this afternoon)…

So much for the ‘bailout’ – here are some regional bank stock’s performances since Friday’s close…

Treasuries were aggressively bid on safe-haven flows from Credit Suisse stress, with the short-end outperforming, but some of that was sold away after the ‘show of support’ headlines. On the week, amid all the incredible volatility, 30Y yield are practically unchanged while 2YU yields are down 65bps…

Source: Bloomberg

The 2Y Yield crashed to its lowest since Sept 2022, back below 4.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y yield tested back below its 200DMA once again but found support…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve continues to steepen, with 2s30s at its least-inverted since Oct 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Fed rate-hike expectations crashed again today, below Monday’s lows, pricing in over 100bps of rate-cuts by year-end at today’s lows and for March, the market says it’s a coin-toss between ‘pause’ and 25bps…

Source: Bloomberg

The last few days have seen the market’s expectations of The Fed’s path ahead totally collapse, signaling a panic series of cuts is coming soon…

Source: Bloomberg

Before we leave bond-land, we note that the 6mo T-Bill yield topping the S&P 500 earnings yield last week (for the first time since Jan 2001), appears to have marked an inflection point…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar saw safe-haven flows today and rallied back to Friday’s highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin traded flat to slightly lower today, finding support at $24,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices collapsed, with WTI suffering its worst daily decline in six months back below $70, plunging to its lowest since Dec 2021 before bouncing back later in the afternoon…

Copper crashed too, nearly red on the year, after ‘meh’ China data and global stress…

Gold extended gains today, despite dollar strength…

Finally, systemic risk indicators are flashing red as our global dollar liquidity proxy crashed further today as demand for dollars abroad is soaring…

Source: Bloomberg

Time for some giant swap lines and jawboning. Who will save the world again this time?

Update(1559ET): Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed in an afternoon press briefing that he spoke with his Russian counterpart Defense Secretary Sergei Shoigu – in the first such phone call since October – about Tuesday’s drone incident over the Black Sea.

“I just got off the phone with my Russian counterpart, Minister Shoigu,” Austin said of efforts at deconfliction, as both sides seek to underscore they’re not looking for a fight. “As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s important that great powers be models of transparency and communication, and the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.”

But the Kremlin has said it has restricted some additional airspace over the Black Sea while conducting its ‘special operation’ in Ukraine. Thus the stage is set for possibly another dangerous intercept encounter such as this one which resulted in the crashing of a MQ-9 Reaper drone. Both sides have said they are seeking to recover the wreckage, but it reportedly crashed in a part of the sea that’s very deep, making recovery unlikely.

Austin had also repeated the Biden administration talking point that it’s President Zelensky alone who is ultimately making the decisions on execution of the war to push the Russians out. The number of times this has been repeated of late is getting awkward…

Defense Sec. Austin:

“President Zelensky is fighting this fight, and he will make the calls on what’s important and what’s not important to his forces.” pic.twitter.com/O5la8eQ06o

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 15, 2023

* * *

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday it’s unclear if the US military will be able to recover the wreckage of the crashed MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Black Sea as it fell in “very deep water”. 

But Moscow is now saying its navy will attempt to retrieve the wreckage first, and so the race is on – as AFP has emphasized. “Moscow said Wednesday it would try to retrieve the wreckage of a U.S. military drone that crashed over the Black Sea in a confrontation that Washington blamed on two Russian fighter jets,” the report says based on Kremlin statements. Brief video purporting to show the intercept incident has also emerged via a well-known Russian military Telegram channel and is being widely circulated:

#MQ9 #drone View of the USAF 🇺🇸MQ-9 drone from the cockpit of the 🇷🇺Russian Su-27fighter via https://t.co/Revg9eulNz Thanks and h/t @qretaxyeta pic.twitter.com/7q8nvJTm6P

— Capt(N) (@Capt_Navy) March 15, 2023

Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev made televised remarks on Tuesday’s drone crash, saying Wednesday, “I don’t know whether we’ll be able to retrieve it or not but it has to be done. And we will certainly work on it.”

Russia is further warning against future “hostile” US flights in its own backyard, while the Pentagon is vowing it will continue to operate in international airspace, which includes the Black Sea.

Both sides are leveling accusations of trying to draw the other into direct conflict, in what marks a dangerous escalation in rhetoric based on the very real drone encounter and close-call, given the pair of Russian jets had stopped just short of shooting down the MQ-9, which Washington would have seen as a direct act of war: 

Patrushev said the incident was further proof that the United States is a direct party to fighting between Moscow and Kyiv and said Russia had a responsibility to “defend our independence and our sovereignty.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had scrambled jets after detecting a U.S. drone over the Black Sea and denied causing the crash.

Even as the Kremlin says it’s deploying assets to recover the drone, the Pentagon vows that it’s working to prevent that: 

Russia said the aircraft had lost control but White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. “obviously” refuted the denial.

He added the United States was trying to prevent the fallen drone from getting into the wrong hands. “We’ve taken steps to protect our equities with respect to that particular drone — that particular aircraft,” Kirby told CNN.

So now we’re witnessing rival superpowers deploying assets in the Black Sea not far from the fighting in Ukraine in a race to recover the advanced Reaper drone. If Moscow does recover it first, it’s likely to prove a humiliation for the US, also as Russia will no doubt try to reverse-engineer and study the UAV – which designed and manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

Authored by Julian Liniger via BitcoinMagazine.com,

We may be heading into another financial crisis, government bailouts for reckless banks included. Bitcoin exists to fix this…

‘ON THE BRINK OF SECOND BAILOUT FOR BANKS’

At its core, Bitcoin is a transaction database. Every 10 minutes, a new collection of such transactions, called a block, is queued up on Bitcoin, immutable for all eternity. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious mastermind behind the first and most popular cryptocurrency, created that first transaction block themself. But Bitcoin is also a political project — at least, the idea behind it was and always will be political. Nakamoto inserted a message into the code that still forms the start of the decentralized Bitcoin database: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

This political message is as relevant these days as it was in early 2009 when a global financial crisis seethed anger and enraged people worldwide. The banks whose recklessness caused this crisis were not punished, but rewarded with taxpayer money. Governments have claimed since then to have learned their lesson. Janet Yellen, the U.S. secretary of the treasury, famously proclaimed in 2017 that she expects that there will be no new financial crisis “in our lifetimes.” Now, guess what: She was wrong.

SILICON VALLEY BANK IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

The second-largest bank failure in U.S. history is now in full swing. After Silvergate Bank, which specialized in financing crypto startups such as the imploded FTX exchange, went belly up, the regional Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has now been hit too. In the course of the zero-interest-rate policy and ever-higher tech startup valuations, the bank had developed from a David into a Goliath — at least in terms of the sums that were transferred and bunkered there.

Unlike in 2008, however, these banks did not speculate on the unhinged U.S. mortgage market but just adapted to the day-to-day insanity of the financial market. In other words: In the zero-interest-rate environment, they didn’t really know where to go with the vast amounts of fresh money. So, they bought conservative, long-dated government bonds to earn at least a little return. The only problem with this is that the U.S. Federal Reserve has now pushed the federal funds rate up to 4.57%, the highest since October 2007.

Previously-purchased bonds, which still had low interest rates, suddenly became the worst-possible investment. When startups that had previously received exorbitant investor cash infusions in the zero-interest environment to stay afloat with even modest business models began withdrawing their money, chaos was inevitable. Of course, SVB isn’t innocent either because if you specialize in a single customer segment, you’re easily vulnerable in a bank run. And it is also becoming increasingly clear that the bank’s general risk management left much to be desired.

THE REVENGE OF CHEAP MONEY

Without wishing to absolve banks like SVB of their guilt, it must be stated: The fact that it could come to this point at all is a consequence of a decade of unaccountability. Although there was a lot of talk after the last financial crisis about stricter controls and the shortcomings of “fractional reserve banking,” in which banks only actually own a small percentage of customer funds, there is not much left after years of zero-interest-rate policies.

The absurdly loose monetary policy of the Federal Reserve (and also of the European Central Bank), which was given a turbo boost in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, is now taking its revenge. “Higher, faster, further” was the motto of the financial and real estate markets. The relenting is now coming too late and too abruptly. Emblematic of the excesses of recent years is not only crazy startup valuations but also thousands of hyped “altcoins,” absurdly-highly-valued NFTs and even increasingly-popular alternative forms of investment, such as luxury watches or even rare Lego sets. We were all forced to speculate. “Cash is trash” was the motto.

‘CRYPTO’ IS A SYMPTOM, NOT A SOLUTION

With all of the chaos in the financial and banking sectors, it must be noted that the crypto industry is not an alternative, but rather an even more fragile variant of the established financial system. It is not surprising that FTX, Luna and other crypto projects were the first to implode due to bank runs and loss of confidence.

Instead of the independence invoked by Nakamoto, many of the most-hyped crypto projects only exist because venture capitalists (VCs) didn’t know where to put their money in recent years, because “blockchain” and “decentralized finance” were nice buzzwords during the COVID-19 pandemic, and — this is an important factor — because there was unlimited money to be made from the newly-created tokens of crypto projects. Creating money out of nothing was a reality. This was lucrative for a few insiders and VCs, but fatal for retail investors and crypto novices.

Incidentally, Silvergate Bank also went under in the wake of SVB, another bank that provided bank accounts to U.S. crypto companies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Gary Gensler, seems to be serious when it says that every cryptocurrency except bitcoin is a possibly-illegal security.

‘CONFIDENCE SCHEME’ OR ABSOLUTE TRANSPARENCY?

And now? Inflation rates of around 10% are not uncommon in Europe, and in the U.S., too, confidence in the words and deeds of the central bank has long been shaken. The wounds of the financial crisis have not healed — on the contrary. The stock market may be facing a sell off; “crypto” is a risky proposition, especially in the U.S.; central banks have to choose between stalling the economy and continuing to drive inflation.

That the banking and monetary system is a “confidence scheme,” i.e., one where trust is essential, is being underscored once again following the recent events surrounding SVB.

Some are expressing disappointment with bitcoin, as it was touted in many quarters as a hedge against inflation. In fact, bitcoin performed excellently during the years of unbridled monetary expansion, but is now suffering relative its all-time highs, like other risk and tech stocks.

Does that mean Bitcoin has failed? Not at all! If you look beyond the day-to-day price plate, you see an increasingly-vibrant ecosystem emerging around Bitcoin, such as Bitcoin mining with green energy, pumping more computing power into the decentralized, disinflationary monetary system than ever before.

As an alternative money and payment system that has no central vulnerability, no opening hours, no CEO, no one to block an account, and is always available to everyone around the globe, Bitcoin has more relevance than ever.

Officials with the Russian oil company Transneft say they’ve uncovered a failed bomb plot to sabotage the Druzhba oil pipeline and maim civilians in the western Bryansk region of Russia. 

Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told TASS on Wednesday that two explosive devices were found at a pumping station. The devices, while they didn’t detonate, had some degree of damage due to the likelihood they were dropped from drones, he explained.

“The character of the explosive parts — metal balls — indicates that the organizers of this sabotage did not intend to damage equipment, but rather to kill people, namely civilian workers at a pumping station on the Druzhba [pipeline]. Investigations are underway,” Demin said. 

The station in question, identified in Bloomberg as the Novozybkov station, “hasn’t been used for oil pumping so far this year; its reservoirs are empty,” according to reports. Demin noted that no part of the station was damaged.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t immediately comment on Transneft’s statements, but the Kremlin has of late ratcheted its accusations that Ukrainian saboteurs are engaging in cross-border attacks. President Putin has recently ordered his federal security services (FSB) to tighten border security after a string of brazen cross-border incidents.

This year has also seen an unprecedented number of drone incursions over Russian territory, and Moscow has gone so far as to allege Western state backing of such operations.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In an interview Tuesday, Joe Biden told perhaps the biggest whopper of a lie to date, claiming that he has actively supported gay marriage since 1959.

Biden told the actor playing an interviewer on The Daily Show that he had an “epiphany” over 60 years ago when he was witness to “two well-dressed men in suits kissing.”

“I hadn’t thought much about it, to tell you the truth,” Biden said, claiming “I was a senior in high school. And my dad was dropping me off, and I remember I was about to get out of the car and I looked to my right and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other. I mean they gave each other a kiss. One looked like he headed to one building, and one headed to the Hercules Corporation building.”

He continued, “And I’ll never forget, I turned and looked at my dad. He said, ‘Joey, it is simple, they love each other. It is simple.’ I’m not joking. It’s simple, they love each other. It’s never been, it’s just that simple. It doesn’t matter whether it is a same-sex or a heterosexual couple, they should be able to be married.”

Weird how Biden, normally so voluble, kept this story in his vest for 55 years. https://t.co/cTzFtS7mQv

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 14, 2023

If this actually happened, and Biden’s father did actually say that, and Biden actually believed it, then there are some important questions to follow up with, which of course were not asked by the guy interviewing him, Kal Penn, who isn’t a journalist and is a former Obama White House staffer turned actor.

So the DC media will just ignore this whopper of a lie?! @JoeBiden said gay people were national security threats when he was a Senator. He also campaigned against gay marriage as VP. @kalpenn journalism is a joke. @maggieNYT @jonkarl https://t.co/ZDDutyfs2L

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 14, 2023

Biden’s new story is just not believable. In 1996 he voted for Defense of Marriage Act. (Excerpt below.) Could have joined the 14 Ds who opposed it–Boxer, Feinstein, Kennedy, Kerry, et al–but did not. https://t.co/sw6HWWTErj https://t.co/aaiPMBrbh5 pic.twitter.com/wKo1ppivdZ

— Byron York (@ByronYork) March 14, 2023

In 1996, Biden voted for DOMA (Defense of marriage act) that established marriage is between a man and a woman.
Now he’s lying about supporting gay marriage since high school. pic.twitter.com/YTYRVjdfOE https://t.co/oTZLwVGYo3

— LibertyJ (@LibertyJen) March 14, 2023

BTW, hats off to @kalpenn for dethroning Nicolle Wallace as having conducted the single most embarrassing interview w/ a politician in human history https://t.co/qZFhZOjgpr

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 14, 2023

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

ALERT! In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch.

Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Earlier today we highlighted comments by TS Lombard’s Steven Blitz, who laid out the path to the end of this asset cycle, pointing out that, given current liability structures and the low ratio of reserves to deposits, we “have reached the point (usually happens when banks fail) where credit will be rationed going forward to strengthen bank balance sheets.”

This “credit rationing” that the TS Lombard strategist mentions, is how expansions turn into contractions, adding that “recession is inevitable.”

According to Blitz, events like SVB and the knock-on impact on bank credit activity brings forward the timing of that contraction in growth.

And now Goldman Sachs appears to agree, cutting its GDP growth forecast as ongoing pressure could cause smaller banks to become more conservative about lending in order to preserve liquidity in case they need to meet depositor withdrawals, and a tightening in lending standards could weigh on aggregate demand.

Manuel Abecasis and David Mericle point out that small and medium-sized banks play an important role in the US economy.

Banks with less than $250bn in assets account for roughly 50% of US commercial and industrial lending, 60% of residential real estate lending, 80% of commercial real estate lending, and 45% of consumer lending.

Based on two separate approaches – driven by a fundamental accounting of the drag on lending from a more conservative risk-taking regime; or by linking any impulse in Goldman’s financial conditions index to bank lending standards and through to growth – Goldman’s Economics team sees a drag on 2023 Q4/Q4 GDP growth of 0.3% to 1.2%.

On the bright side (kinda), bank lending standards had already tightened significantly over the last few quarters to levels previously unseen outside of recessions, presumably because many bank risk divisions shared the recession fears that have been widespread in financial markets.

This is important because it means that lending standards started at a tight rather than a normal level, and as a result the incremental impact of a further tightening brought on by recent small bank stress might be more limited than it seems at first.

But the lagged effect of that lending constraint has yet to show up en masse.

Finally, Goldman explains that this level of tightening in lending standards is equivalent to one to two additional 25bps hikes, which could help explain why expectations for Fed hikes from here have collapsed amid systemic risk and financial stability threats.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Audit giant KPMG is standing by its audits of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, which collapsed when customers rushed to withdraw their savings in panic-fueled bank runs.

The two banks failed not long after their respective annual reports were certified by KPMG, one of the so-called “Big Four” accounting firms, a list that also includes Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Paul Knopp, CEO of KPMG’s U.S. operations, defended the firm’s audit work on SVB and Signature in an interview with Financial Times during a Tuesday event at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business.

He pointed to “market-driven events” and “unpredictable” customer reactions to such events as examples of factors behind bank failures that audit work is powerless to address.

“As we take into account everything we know today … we stand behind the reports we issued and we think we followed all professional standards,” Knopp told the outlet.

Knopp insisted that KPMG “absolutely” considered all the facts that were known up until the day the audits were issued, adding that it’s impossible to know with certainty what will happen after the reports are released.

He didn’t go into the specifics of the causes of the twin bank failures, speaking only in general terms about “actions” and “reactions” in the context of bank runs.

The SVB collapse came as depositors rushed for the exits as word spread that the bank had booked huge losses on its bond portfolios, which eroded in value due to rising interest rates.

Signature’s failure came as panic spread from the collapse of SVB and as Signature’s connections with the crypto space seemed to spook depositors, who rushed to withdraw their money.

Both banks had above average amounts of uninsured deposits, meaning amounts above the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) deposit guarantee of $250,000 per depositor per account category. Uninsured amounts are subject to losses in case of bank failure.

‘Going Concern’ Warnings

KPMG signed its audit of SVB on Feb. 24, two weeks before the bank failed. The Signature audit was signed off on by KMPG on March 1, a little over a week before its collapse.

Questions have been raised as to why neither of KPMG’s two audits included a so-called “going concern” warning, which would be a requirement if the audit firm had substantial doubt as to whether the banks could survive over the next 12 months.

KPMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times nor to a question about why the two audits didn’t include such a warning.

Experts say it’s likely that KPMG will face regulatory scrutiny over the audits.

“Common sense tells you that an auditor issuing a clean report, a clean bill of health, on the 16th-largest bank in the United States that within two weeks fails without any warning, is trouble for the auditor,” Lynn Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said in remarks to the Wall Street Journal.

The failures of SVB and Signature were the second and third biggest bank collapses in U.S. history and drew fears of contagion risk. This prompted U.S. financial authorities to adopt a “systemic risk exemption” and expand the FDIC’s guarantee to cover all the deposits at the two banks, so including money that would normally be uninsured and therefore subject to market discipline and losses.

…

Read more here…

In Vancouver, Canada, a man who owned a Tesla opened the door of a Model 3 parked in a supermarket lot with his smartphone app. He got into the car and drove to a nearby school to pick up his kids. However, he later realized he had accidentally taken someone else’s Model 3.

According to Rajesh Randev’s statement to Global News, he noticed a stranger’s Tesla parked beside his own car, which happened to be the same model and color. He then used his Tesla smartphone app to unlock the vehicle and drove away. 

During his drive to pick up his kids from school, Randev began to realize that something was amiss.

“I was able to get access, a hold of that person’s car but while I start driving it, I realized there was a crack on the windshield,” he said.

So he called his wife to ask why and she did not know. He also noticed his charger was not where he usually had it.

Then this happened:

“After, five, 10 minutes I got a text on my phone that said ‘Rajesh are you driving Tesla?'”

He said the person who messaged him told him he was driving the wrong Tesla.

It was only after he parked that Randev noticed the wheels were different from his car. He then called the person who messaged him and they realized he had taken the other person’s Tesla.

Surprisingly he was able to get back into the and met up with the owner. Randev said he did not know how it happened. 

“We were both laughing and I called the police as well,” he added. “The police said they have my statement but they cannot give me a file number because nothing happened but if something does happen to let them know and they will investigate.”

“Apparently, I found some glitch,” Randev said.

By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

Should the markets’ worst fears on Credit Suisse come true, the euro-area economy will fall off a cliff, upend the global financial system and bring policy tightening by major central banks to a screaming halt.

Unlike Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the Swiss lender is classified as systemically important by the US Financial Stability Board — meaning it’s too big to fail as a collapse has the potential to trigger a financial crisis.

European Central Bank officials contacted lenders Wednesday to ask about their financial exposure to Credit Suisse, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Credit Suisse reported that its assets under management were almost 1.3 trillion Swiss francs, or the equivalent of $1.4 trillion, as recently as last month. For perspective, that would amount to almost 10% of the 14.5 trillion euro-area economy

The cost of insuring Credit Suisse’s debt against default for one year jumped to a record 2728 basis points on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the company’s shares tumbled to a record and its bonds plunged to levels typically associated with distress.

The latest leg lower was spurred by comments from Saudi National Bank — Credit Suisse’s top shareholder — that it had no intention of investing more into the Swiss lender, which is in the midst of a complex three-year restructuring in a bid to return to profitability.

Over in the US, a swift response from policymakers including the Federal Reserve staved off a crisis that loomed over the financial landscape following the failure of SVB. The California-based lender collapsed after a loss of depositor confidence compelled the bank to sell assets that had lost value amid the Fed’s tightening.

The Fed lost little time before unveiling a term-funding program that essentially allowed US banks — presumably those that may be in a predicament similar to SVB amid the increase in interest rates — to borrow against bonds that may have lost value at 100 cents on the dollar. That quick backstop helped assuage some of the worst fears of depositors and investors.

It’s not exactly clear how the plot will play out in Europe, with UBS Group AG chief executive officer Ralph Hamers commenting that he won’t answer “hypothetical questions” about its struggling Swiss rival and that UBS is “focused on our own strategy.”

Credit Suisse’s Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Koerner earlier this week pleaded for patience, citing its CET1 capital ratio of 14.1% in the fourth quarter and a liquidity coverage ratio of 144% that has since increased to about 150% on average
Still, that patience may be in short supply in the global financial markets, with investors showing increased sensitivity to any perception of additional risk.

For policymakers in Europe and the US, though, what is at stake here is an entity that has a far greater domino effect in its ability to damage sentiment than Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank combined.

Actor Ryan Reynolds has scored another hit with the sale of his budget wireless provider Mint Mobile to T-Mobile US Inc. for more than a billion dollars. 

On Tuesday, T-Mobile announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ka’ena Corporation and its subsidiaries and brands: Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile, for $1.35 billion in a combination of 39% cash and 61% stock. 

“The actual price to be paid by T-Mobile will be based upon Ka’ena’s performance during certain periods before and after the closing,” T-Mobile wrote in a press release. 

The second-largest US mobile service provider has been in talks with Mint for many months. Bloomberg first reported rumors of a possible sale on Jan. 11.

Bloomberg pointed out:

Reynolds, who owns an undisclosed but “significant” stake in Mint, will continue to make commercial appearances on the company’s behalf, co-founder David Glickman said in an interview, adding the actor has incentives to “continue for years.” 

Glickman and his partner Rizwan Kassim will join T-Mobile and manage the business, which includes Ultra Mobile, an international phone service.

It was also rumored by Bloomberg earlier this year that Reynolds owns 20% of Mint, but since only speculation — there’s no concrete evidence of how much the actor owns. 

In recent years, Mint has been widely popular with the working poor for providing affordable pay-as-you-go cellphone plans for around $15 per month. 

Reynolds can do no wrong with his portfolio of companies, from wireless providers to liquor. 

He sold his Aviation American Gin brand as part of a $610 million deal in 2020 to Diageo, the world’s largest spirits producer.