The caller was UBS (UBS) chairman Colm Kelleher. “I was definitely not expecting the phone call,” Ermotti told CNN on the sidelines of a conference in Geneva last month. UBS paid 60% less than the beaten-down value of Credit Suisse shares just before its last-ditch rescue over a weekend. Even if Credit Suisse had none of that painful baggage, the sheer size of the two banks makes the merger an enormous undertaking. “The fact that UBS was asked to be part of the solution (to Credit Suisse), that was the ultimate success,” Ermotti told CNN.

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Persons: Sergio Ermotti, Colm Kelleher, Ermotti, ” Ermotti, Anke Reingen, Roger Federer, “, ”, Morgan Stanley, ” Kelleher, Michael Buholzer, it’s, Katrin Koch, Tom Naratil, —, Merrill Lynch, Stefan Wermuth, Oswald Gruebel, ” Christopher Wheeler, Fabrice Coffrini, … Organizations: Switzerland CNN, UBS, Credit Suisse, CNN, Bank of America, JPMorgan, HSBC, RBC Capital Markets, RBC, Ermotti’s, Banca, Citi, UBS —, Bloomberg, New York Times, Getty Locations: Geneva, Switzerland, Swiss, Zurich, Lugano, Singapore, Europe, Middle East, Africa, New York, AFP