UBS pushed more into private banking after the new team was put in place, but I might be wrong on that. Credit Suisse in not in the top 10 in the investment banking chart, and is placed between Barclays and Deutsche Bank, two Golems themselves. To put it into perspective, AIG was the biggest insurer in the world up until the day of its fallout, I wouldn't read too much out of these charts, just a couple of days ago there was an opinion peace in the Financial Times (or maybe the Economist) decrying how Goldman Sachs has lust its shine even though it's placed second in the IB chart. In this industry (one based on trust) momentum is everything.
Nobody is saying UBS or Credit Suisse are well-run companies. The original post argued Swiss banking is rudderless without money laundering. UBS and CS are valid counterpoints, in being diversified international heavyweights. Their profits may be mirages, along with Deutsche Bank and Barclays. But that is a different argument than "they're screwed because they can't launder money anymore."
I was arguing more against the “international titans” thing, I personally think that it is too risky for a relatively small country like Switzerland to stand behind not one but two such big financial institutions and I also think that the two banks’ recent retreat is a realization (by their stakeholders) of this obvious truth. The size thing is why they were closer to folding up compared to a bank like Deutsche, who has been run worse but which the German Government would never let default. On the other hand, the Swiss Government doesn’t have enough reserves to bail out either of them, they probably realized that they don’t want to be the next Iceland hence the banks’ change of course.
Bottom line is that you can only make big money on the international financial markets if your financial “home” market is big enough and if your “home” authorities (the Government) is ready to back you up if anything bad happens by using said home market to pump you up and keep you afloat. The Swiss financial market is just not big enough to keep either CS or UBS afloat in case either of them is about to go down like Lehman.
