Good evening,

Well, that escalated quickly!

After years of speculation and rumours of a tie-up, UBS and Credit Suisse bunkered down for takeover talks at the weekend, spurred on by the Swiss banking regulator.

The aim was to shore up the 167-year-old lender, which received a big funding injection from the regulator last week, but is still to convince the market it is a safe haven for funds.

It’s a huge global story, and is capturing eyeballs everywhere.

Australia’s a long way from the talks, and a long way from how it got to this point.

So, what’s going to happen here? No one at Credit Suisse knew at the weekend - and we doubt it’s even being considered in Zurich, where both banks are based.

Junior bankers, analysts and traders were calling their MD bosses for insight over the weekend, but were just referred back to updates from the Financial Times and The Australian Financial Review. It was a highly unusual weekend.

They’ll go back to work on Monday morning, unsure of what to find. In reality, they know it’ll all be dictated by much more powerful forces, fighting a fight that’s unrelated to them.

Fortunately - or unfortunately - Credit Suisse’s local top brass, lead by country head for the past 3½ years Richard Gibb, were already booked to head to Hong Kong this week for the bank’s annual Asia Investment Conference. The travelling party is understood to include a bunch of MDs chaperoning clients - and it will be interesting to see who actually makes it, given what’s going on.

Elsewhere, we got our hands on RBC Capital Markets’ pitch for EastLink toll road, and have heard about Goldman Sachs offloading some of its balance sheet positions in Australia.

Happy reading,
Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
Street Talk editors