On Wednesday 23 September 2026, the Swiss Council of States (Ständerat) voted 29 to 16 to require systemically important banks — effectively UBS — to back their foreign subsidiaries with 90% hard core capital (CET1), a measure that forms part of the post-Credit Suisse 2023 Too big to fail reform. UBS immediately labelled the upper-house stance an “excessive tightening,” reflecting a clash that had already run for months through the parliamentary process.
The 90% backing ratio applies to foreign subsidiaries of systemically important banks, and in practice captures UBS, the institution the reform effectively targets. The Ständerat’s vote arrived after prolonged dispute over how aggressively to ring-fence overseas units, a fight that preceded the 23 September decision and shaped the final margin.
UBS contends the math undermines its model: the bank says the decision would require about $16 billion in additional CET1 to satisfy the new foreign-subsidiary capital floor. SRF reported the estimate alongside UBS’s warning that the rule effectively defeats the way it currently runs those entities.
The reform is not yet law. The matter now passes to the National Council, the lower house, with the earliest possible debate scheduled for December, and SRF noted that a referendum remains a live option that could stall or reshape the final text. A 29-to-16 margin in the upper house is decisive but not the end of the legislative road.
What makes the vote more than a routine capital tweak is the insistence on 90% hard core capital at the foreign-subsidiary level, a requirement that applies the too-big-to-fail resilience standard directly to UBS’s cross-border entities rather than to the group as a whole. The post-Credit Suisse reform era has repeatedly tested where Swiss lawmakers draw the line between bank autonomy and systemic safety.
Whether the National Council keeps that 90% figure intact will turn on the same tension already visible in the Ständerat: a desire to make UBS structurally immune to foreign-unit failure, set against the bank’s insistence that the cost and operational hit are disproportionate. The upper house has spoken in a number; the lower house gets the next word.