Is Credit Suisse the tornado on the banking horizon?

Headlines about ‘alarm over CreditSuisse’ might be read as a sign of normality in financial news, rather than the reverse. The second-ranked Swiss bank (behind UBS) has slipped on so many banana skins in recent years that, as I wrote in February: ‘I sometimes wonder how and why it survives.’ As a recognised basket-case, its difficulties are not usually seen as harbingers of systemic trouble.

But in the Kwarteng-induced febrile mood of London’s markets, the question has to be asked. This is October, the devil’s favourite month for provoking crashes. Could Credit Suisse be the tornado on banking’s horizon?

Amid rumours of critical balance-sheet weakness, Credit Suisse’s shares have fallen 60 per cent this year. More recently, the price of its credit default swaps – a form of insurance against the bank failing to repay its bond debt – multiplied almost sixfold. Reports that the Bank of England was liaising with Swiss authorities to avert wider turbulence upped the unease. New-broom chief executive Ulrich Körner added unintended fuel by saying his bank is at ‘a critical moment’ as he prepares yet another strategic review to address running losses, in part by selling off underperforming assets.

‘How big is the capital hole at Credit Suisse?’ asks the FT, quoting pundits who think the answer is four billion Swiss francs. Körner retorts that his bank has ‘a strong capital and liquidity position’, while JPMorgan pronounces it ‘healthy’, with key ratios ‘well above requirements’. And that’s believed to be the case for most major European banks, after a decade of capital-building and stress-testing. Even with interest rates spiking, property markets wobbling and bankruptcies rising, the sector looks well braced for a difficult winter.

But should we worry that it might not be? As the investors who have hammered Credit Suisse move on to other targets such as Deutsche Bank, whose shares have also dropped, will negativity turn into self-fulfilling prophecy? Most chat on this theme is to be found on Twitter, the Reddit trading forums and sites such as Bitcoin.com – natural homes of back-bedroom gamblers rather than serious analysts. But that rumour-driven crowd has weight of numbers these days and can’t be ignored.

‘Is Credit Suisse the next Lehman Brothers?’ asks the Economist, answering its own question: ‘Probably not.’ I agree, but there’s no accounting for the madness of markets.

Wise farmer Dyson

Lost in the current political mêlée is one of Liz Truss’s better intentions: to refocus agriculture policy on the issue of food security, or lack of it, rather than green credentials. That means abandoning the Johnson regime’s post-Brexit farm payments scheme, which was designed to reward conservation over production and regarded by many farmers as consigning them to the role of keepers of a rural theme park.

In 2020 (the latest figures available), 46 per cent of our food was imported; in fruit, we produce only 16 per cent of what we consume. Farmers Weekly recently reported falling UK production of eggs, broiler chicks, cucumbers and tomatoes in a sector squeezed by energy costs, labour shortages and supermarket power. Despite the weak pound, food imports look likelier to rise than to fall.

But my farming correspondent tells me his brethren would love to be greener and more productive at the same time, devoting marginal land to nature while maximising output from better soil. In the face of subsidised and cheap imports, they need well-targeted financial support.

Oddly, their spokeswoman Minette Batters of the National Farmers’ Union seems to be fence-sitting on the policy change. A stronger voice is that of billionaire mega-farmer Sir James Dyson, who says we should grow more produce under glass like the Dutch, combine sustainability with technology, become a net food exporter within a decade – and stop ‘taking farmers for granted’. This column sometimes pokes fun at Dyson, but on the future of farming he deserves a hearing.

Entrepreneur tour

I’ve just completed a six-city lunch marathon to meet regional finalists for our Economic Innovator of the Year Awards. As ever, the range was extraordinary: in Manchester, electric toothbrushes, vegan chocolate, sexual health testing and energy-saving for data centres; in Birmingham, airships, incubators, reusable nappies and digital sensors for oil platforms. But the entrepreneurs behind these ventures all had admirable traits in common: obsession with product, vision of scale and a refreshing ability to look beyond economic storms and political follies.

On the end of my tour I met another bunch of resilient business-owners, at a gala dinner of the Catering Equipment Distributors Association. Importers and installers of kitchen kit for hospitality, hospitals and schools, they’re at the mercy of weak consumer spending, supply hold-ups, public-sector cuts and changing patterns of finance. The short story on the hospitality front is that nightclubs are down but cocktails are up; that the pandemic killed 9,000 venues; and that private equity is fleeing ‘casual dining’, of which it backed far too much. On the supply front, who knew that industrial-scale kitchen-fitters share a problem with car manufacturers, which is that most of the world’s ‘wiring looms’ (assemblies that keep miles of cabling safe and tidy) are made in low-cost factories in Ukraine?

As ever, I listen and learn as I eat. In doing so, I also observe on your behalf what makes a good restaurant: my best-of-tour award goes to the Dome, a former palace of banking in Edinburgh’s George Street, where we talked about road surfacing, power networks, big-data fintech and lab-made meat. Indeed, we talked so much we barely noticed what we ate. But the service was smiling, attentive and perfectly timed, the server was called Emma, and the moral – for any business, hi-tech or low, consumer or industrial, physical or digital – is that the first rule for success is to take the best possible care of the customer.