Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on November 14, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleSwiss lawmakers urge the government to ease UBS capital requirements, aligning them with international standards to prevent excessive burdens.
ZURICH (Reuters) -Capital requirements for UBS should not exceed those in other major financial centres, a second Swiss parliamentary committee said on Friday, echoing a call from last week and raising pressure on the government to ease certain rules.
The plea by the upper chamber's influential economic affairs and taxation committee follows the playbook of its sister body for the lower house, urging the Swiss government not to burden UBS disproportionately with new valuation rules for software and deferred tax assets.
"Care should be taken not to exceed international standards and common practice in competing financial centers — both in the particulars and as a whole," the committee said in a letter to the government.
Under a plan to make Switzerland's remaining big bank less risky and avoid another Credit Suisse-style meltdown, the government in June laid out plans that could force UBS to hold $26 billion more in core capital - a move the bank has called extreme and damaging.
The committee's intervention focuses on a proposed rule to prohibit including software and deferred tax assets as core capital, a change that the government estimates could increase UBS's capital requirements by about $9 billion.
That is a rule the government can mandate directly without the say of parliament, via so-called ordinance measures, currently set to come into force in 2027.
UBS opposes the exclusion, arguing it would destroy capital without justification, thereby weakening the bank and the Swiss financial industry.
It is unclear whether the government will heed the call to soften rules.
(Reporting by Ariane Luthi, editing by John Revill)
Capital requirements are regulations that determine the minimum amount of capital a bank must hold as a percentage of its risk-weighted assets to ensure stability and solvency.
Deferred tax assets are tax reductions that a company can use to lower future tax payments, often arising from losses or expenses that can be deducted in future periods.
A financial crisis is a situation in which the value of financial institutions or assets drops significantly, often leading to widespread economic instability.
A regulatory framework consists of rules, regulations, and guidelines that govern the operations of financial institutions to ensure compliance and protect the financial system.
Investment management is the professional management of various securities and assets to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors.
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