Swiss Roll (B)

Abstract

In the aftermath of global financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing capital flows into Switzerland, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) decided to peg Swiss Franc (CHF) to the Euro (EUR), and announced that it would not let CHF go beyond 1.20 starting 6 September, 20 11. With ever-increasing capital flows, maintaining the peg required the SNB to purchase foreign currency assets almost endlessly, and by the end-of 2014 its foreign exchange reserves stood at almost 80% of its Gross Domestic Product. With the European Central Bank announcing its "quantitative easing" program from 2015, and faced with the prospect of a massive balance sheet, SNB finally decided to discontinue the peg starting January 15,2015. lmmediately after the peg was removed, the CHF surged by almost 30% to EUR and this left many market participants stranded with losses worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This case describes the market turmoil and the main casualties after the peg was discontinued, with a focus on one particular retail foreign exchange (FX) brokerage firm, FXCM Inc., which was left with a negative equity of almost $300 million after removal of the peg.