Full access to files granted to plaintiffs and experts commissioned to prepare an independent report to determine the value of Credit Suisse at going concern values

Full access to files granted to plaintiffs and experts commissioned to prepare an independent expert opinion to determine the value of Credit Suisse at going concern values

On 5 February 2026, the Commercial Court in Zurich issued two landmark rulings: it granted the plaintiffs full access to the unredacted versions of the documents edited by UBS and definitively awarded the expert opinion mandate to determine the value of Credit Suisse at going concern values.

Decision on access to files in the proceedings against UBS 
UBS had attempted to deny the plaintiffs access to the documents it had edited. The court rejected this and ruled that the plaintiffs should be granted access to the unredacted documents. These documents shed light in particular on UBS's internal decision-making process in the run-up to the CS takeover on 19 March 2023, as well as its own valuation models for Credit Suisse.
UBS had requested that the plaintiffs only be allowed to inspect those documents on which the court experts had expressly based their reports, and even then only in heavily redacted versions. The plaintiffs would therefore not have known whether the edited documents contained any further relevant information to which the experts had not referred.
However, in order to ensure the protection of confidential business secrets, access is subject to strict procedural requirements. The files in question may only be viewed physically on the premises of the commercial court. There is no right to reproduce them, for example by making copies or taking photographs. Furthermore, the information contained in the documents is confidential and may not be disclosed to third parties.
This decision now gives UBS two options for challenging the court ruling: it can appeal the ruling to the Federal Supreme Court within 30 days. Alternatively, the bank has the right to withdraw the edited documents from the proceedings in their entirety within 40 days in order to prevent them from being inspected.
However, the court clarified in this context that such a withdrawal would be taken into account to the detriment of UBS in the subsequent assessment of evidence in accordance with Art. 164 of the Swiss Civil Procedure Code (ZPO).

Expert opinion mandate awarded
In parallel with these developments, the Commercial Court in Zurich commissioned Prof. Dr Peter Leibfried and Roger Neininger to prepare an expert opinion. The two experts are now tasked with determining the value of Credit Suisse as at 19 March 2023 at going concern values with regard to the merger. Fortunately, the Federal Supreme Court did not uphold the appeal against their appointment. The preparation of the expert opinion is expected to take some time.

About SASV:
The Swiss Investor Protection Association (Schweizerischer Anlegerschutzverein, SASV) is committed to transparency in the Swiss capital market and the promotion and enforcement of investor rights in Switzerland. Its aim is to represent the interests of investors in relation to financial investments and to support them in enforcing their corporate and economic interests. The goal is to promote good corporate governance and transparency on the Swiss capital market. The SASV is a non-profit organisation and is not profit-oriented.