A law firm in the Principality is also acting as a joint plaintiff against the terms of the sale of Credit Suisse. Lawyers from Liechtenstein argue that this is a cross-border matter.
Lennert Partners, a law firm based in Triesen in Liechtenstein, made public comments about UBS’s response to the standard actions brought before the Commercial Court of Zurich. Last August, Lennert Partners also filed a class-action lawsuit under the Merger Act there.
Was CS Undercapitalized?
The plaintiffs consider the conversion ratio of one UBS share for 22.48 Credit Suisse shares, which was agreed upon during the forced sale of Credit Suisse, to be unreasonable and demand compensation – in the case of Lennert Partners, compensation of at least 7.78 Swiss francs per share. In the deal, UBS had paid around 3 billion francs for the bank in crisis. On the stock market, however, CS had been worth two and a half times more than this – 1.86 per share.
As finews.ch also reported, UBS stated in its response in February that CS was undercapitalized and would have disappeared immediately if UBS had not taken it over. In doing so, they also prevented a global banking crisis. The major bank refutes the lawsuit.
Cross-Border Reasoning
The Liechtenstein law firm is now using German law in their arguments, among other things – some of the team of lawyers previously worked in large law firms in the neighboring country. If you take a cross-border view of the German administration of justice, you will find that when determining an appropriate cash compensation for the minority shareholder which is forced out of the company by a majority shareholder, the stock market value is seen as an absolute lower limit, Lennert Partners replied. Both cases are objectively comparable.
According to its own statements, the firm represents plaintiffs with shares in the tens of millions; these are primarily institutional investors, but also large private investors. The lead plaintiffs are an investment fund and a private individual.
Thousands of Plaintiffs Represented
In the meantime, the Commercial Court of Zurich has decided that all of the legal actions against UBS are to be merged into one uniform procedure. As finews.ch also reported, western Swiss company Legalpass and the Swiss Investor Protection Association (SASV) are joint plaintiffs there. Together, they represent thousands of CS shareholders.
