The private banking industry currently faces a multitude of challenges: changing client needs, the arrival of disruptive business models and new entrants, regulatory pressures, new technologies, a more complex and uncertain macro-economic and financial environment, etc. For incumbents, it is urgent to react and reinvent themselves.

The UBS/Credit Suisse affair has caused the AT1/CoCo bond markets to struggle By tightening their monetary policy sharply and rapidly, central banks have highlighted certain weaknesses in our financial system: insufficient risk coverage, liquidity problems, lack of business diversification, governance issues, and now uncertainties in the treatment of hybrid instruments. After the failure of some US regional banks, the UBS/Credit Suisse affair has shaken the financial world and more particularly the specialists of a specific bond segment which weighs about 250 billion dollars: Additional Tier 1 bonds (AT1) and/or Contingent Convertible bonds (CoCos).

DOWNGRADING EQUITIES TO CAUTIOUS As an old adage says, Monetary policy tightening is like dynamite fishing: when the blast hits, it decimates everything in the vicinity. The small fishes rise to the surface first. But it can take some time for the whale(s) to show up. With the unwind of a major bank (Silicon Valley Bank) last week and another (Signature Bank) over the weekend, it is clear that the aftershock of the Fed's policy tightening is starting to be felt. But should we see these two banks as whales or as just being those small fishes? At this stage, it is very difficult to answer to this question. However, we believe that we have entered a new period of uncertainty which should lead to an Equity Risk Premium re-rating. As such, we are downgrading equities from positive to cautious.

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