Article: Credit crunch writedowns force Credit Suisse into first-quarter loss

The Swiss banking industry suffered another blow yesterday as Credit Suisse, until now seen as a mild casualty of the financial crisis, plunged to a first-quarter loss because of big credit crunch writedowns.

Potential losses on leveraged finance and structured credit of SFr5.3bn (2.6bn) drove Switzerland's second-biggest bank to a SFr2.15bn loss for the first three months of the year. The charges are slight compared with the $19bn (9.6bn) of first-quarter writedowns by its bigger rival UBS, but Credit Suisse can no longer claim to be largely unaffected by the market meltdown.

"Our first-quarter results are clearly unsatisfactory," Brady Dougan, Credit Suisse's chief executive, said. The ...

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