UBS donated CHF 1.4 million to the parties

In 2024, the last remaining major bank in Switzerland was the most generous company donor in the country. But overall, fewer donations have been flowing to the parties since the downfall of Credit Suisse.

UBS supported the bourgeois parties in 2024 with a total of 1.4 million francs. This emerges from the recently published addition to the UBS sustainability report 2024.

The last remaining major bank in Switzerland should continue to be the most generous company donor in the country for the Swiss parties. This is at least if not too much has changed in other companies compared to the party donations open to the reporting year 2023.

As the UBS writes in the addition of its sustainability report, only parties are supported who “work for free competition, the market economy and the Switzerland financial center”. The donation amount is defined in the national parliament and the cantonal parliaments in accordance with the respective party.

UBS partially catches the failure of the Credit Suisse

In 2023 the UBS of the SVP had donated CHF 241,000, the FDP 195,000 francs, the mid -CHF 173,000 and the GLP 66,000. SP and Greens went away empty -handed.

This emerges from the annual invoices of the parties for 2023. They had to disclose them for the first time due to the new transparency regulations for political financing.

In 2023, Credit Suisse, whose takeover was sealed by UBS on March 19, 2023, flowed to the bourgeois parties. Here, too, the SVP benefited the most with CHF 190,000.

With a total of CHF 1.4 million in 2024, UBS retained the donation contribution to the parties in 2023 by UBS and Credit Suisse.

However, the sum means a decline compared to earlier years. The UBS gave the parties to CHF 750,000 each annually, the Credit Suisse even CHF 1 million a year by 2022. In contrast to UBS, she distributed the money by 2022 regardless of political criteria.

Parliament rejected ban on donations for banks

The publication of the UBS donation to the bourgeois parties in 2024 took place at a politically charged time. The sustainability report was published during the spring session of the parliament. There debated the national and state council about the PUK report and its knowledge about the downfall of Credit Suisse.

In order to prevent a similar scenario at UBS, the Too-Big-to-Fail legislation is to be adapted for systemically relevant banks. Among other things, there is a discussion about tightened minimum requirements for equity.

The UBS and the banking association have raised an intensive lobbying in Bundesbern so that the new regulation in the sense of the financial center fails. The National Council declined to prohibit an initiative of the SP parliamentary group that wanted to ban party donations from companies with “express or tacit state guarantee”-the UBS was in the sights of the UBS.