Credit Suisse Group’s
CSGN,
-6.35%
stock fell almost 6% on Tuesday morning following a Reuters report that Swiss financial regulator Finma is looking into comments made by the bank’s chairman Axel Lehmann in December about outflows at the struggling banking giant.
Finma is evaluating whether executives like Lehmann knew that clients were continuing to withdraw funds when he said in media interviews that outflows had stabilized, according to the report, citing two people familiar with the matter.
ADRs in Credit Suisse
CS,
-1.31%
also fell almost 5% during Tuesday premarket trading.
Lehmann had told the Financial Times in early December that after a surge in October, outflows had “completely flattened out” and “partially reversed.” The next day, he told Bloomberg News that client withdrawals had “basically stopped.”
Credit Suisse’s latest reports show wealthy clients pulled more than $100 billion from the bank in the fourth quarter, with two-thirds of the net outflows in October, when it was dealing with intense media scrutiny over its ability to survive. But the bank did say that outflows continued in November and in December.
Read: Credit Suisse posts hefty $1.51 billion loss as clients pull billions from wealth management business
Finma and Lehmann did not comment on Reuters’ request for comment. Credit Suisse told MarketWatch that it does “not comment on speculation.”
