Is Credit Suisse now trolling itself? That’s what it looked like this week as the bank chose the very day of its latest profit warning to announce the latest iteration of the Credit Suisse Worry Barometer.
Happily for the bank, the barometer – a survey of the biggest concerns among the Swiss population – didn’t feature Credit Suisse in the top 10 worries. But that might not come as much comfort to investors watching the bank’s stock price.
They will have two particular levels at the forefront of their minds right now – SFr3.70 ($3.91) and SFr2.52.
The first is the theoretical ex-rights price (Terp) for the SFr2.24 billion rights issue that is under way. The Terp matters because it is what a pre-announcement share price should theoretically fall to after the dilutive effect of a capital increase, assuming all else is equal.
All else is never equal, of course, and never more so than when Credit Suisse is concerned. Rights issues are carried out over weeks of a moving market, and with Credit Suisse there is also the drip-feed of bad news to cope with.
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