When former regulatory insiders publish pointed critiques of a non-final court ruling in a live appeal — without disclosing their institutional histories — the concern moves beyond academic disagreement into a question of transparency. According to Antigua.news, that is precisely the situation unfolding in Switzerland around the Credit Suisse AT1 bond litigation.
In 2025, Switzerland's Federal Administrative Court ruled that FINMA lacked a sufficient legal basis to write down CHF 16.5 billion in Credit Suisse AT1 bonds — one of the most consequential financial law judgments in recent Swiss history. FINMA appealed, and the case is now pending before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. Yet before the country's highest judges have ruled, the decision has already provoked an unusually sharp academic counter-offensive.
University of Bern professors Mirjam Eggen and Markus Müller published a forceful critique of the Federal Administrative Court's reasoning in SZW. Thomas Jutzi followed in AJP with a doctrinal defence of FINMA's position. These were not detached, retrospective analyses written after the dust had settled. They were pointed interventions against a ruling already moving through the appellate system — and both texts make clear the authors knew the case remained live.
The problem is not the argument. Scholars are entitled to argue. The problem is what the author notes left out. The Eggen and Müller article informed readers of university titles, thanked an assistant for handling footnotes, and provided the research cut-off date. Jutzi's article listed his academic title, thanked an assistant, and noted the piece was completed in early January 2026. What neither article disclosed was the institutional background any serious reader would want to know: Eggen previously worked at FINMA and the Federal Department of Finance, and Jutzi previously worked at FINMA.
Eggen's regulatory biography is neither obscure nor trivial. Her official University of Bern CV states she worked at FINMA from 2010 to 2013 as Head of the Regulation Group, and at the Federal Department of Finance from 2013 to 2015 as Expert Regulation. FINMA itself noted, upon announcing her appointment as Chair of the Swiss Takeover Board, that during those years she oversaw work on the creation of the Financial Services Act. FINMA also states that Swiss Takeover Board members are appointed and supervised by FINMA's Board of Directors.
The connections do not end there. After the Credit Suisse collapse, the Federal Department of Finance placed Eggen on its Expert Group on Banking Stability. That group's report identifies her as a member and recommends that the FDF, together with FINMA and industry, examine how Switzerland's market for AT1 instruments can be rehabilitated. One of the scholars publicly criticising the court's AT1 ruling also sat within the federal post-Credit Suisse expert structure discussing how to restore confidence in AT1s. That context does not disqualify her from writing. Its absence from the author note is difficult to characterise as anything other than academic minimalism.
Jutzi's record raises a parallel concern. His official University of Bern profile states that in 2012–2013 he served as Senior Specialist for Policy and Regulation at FINMA. A Federal Council report further notes that the State Secretariat for International Finance commissioned an external opinion from him, received on 4 May 2021, and used it as a basis for its assessment. Readers were not encountering a scholar descending from pure abstraction onto neutral ground. They were encountering someone who had worked inside FINMA and later for the federal finance apparatus.
The irony is pointed. In a separate 2024 article, Jutzi and a co-author had no difficulty informing readers that the piece was based on a legal opinion prepared for the Asset Management Association Switzerland, and expressly stating that no specific outcome had been discussed or promised in advance. The mechanics of disclosure, in other words, are not unfamiliar in Bern. They appear to be available when needed — just not, apparently, when the subject is FINMA, AT1 bonds, and a live Supreme Court appeal.
To be clear, as reported by Antigua.news, no allegation is made that UBS or FINMA commissioned or paid for these articles, and no public evidence of such an arrangement has been identified in the sources reviewed. The criticism is narrower and, in some respects, more serious: readers were denied the full institutional context required to assess each author's proximity to the regulatory world whose legal position they were defending.
Müller's role adds a further layer of irony. In 2021, he publicly argued that on questions of academic independence, the real issue is not only what contracts say but also the impression created in the eyes of the public. He specifically warned that when a major bank funds research in an area where it holds strong interests, an appearance of dependence arises that formal assurances cannot simply neutralise. That principle, it turns out, applies with equal force to the situation at hand.
The University of Bern's own standards do not help matters. Its research-compliance guidance states that all researchers must disclose apparent, possible, or actual conflicts of interest. Its scientific integrity regulations list both the failure to disclose vested interests and the non-disclosure of conflicts of interest among integrity-related concerns. This reporting does not claim a formal violation has been established. It makes a simpler point: when an institution publicly requires disclosure in those terms, an author note that records the footnote assistant but omits prior FINMA and Federal Department of Finance roles falls well short of the standard.
The timing compounds the omission. These were not retrospective essays published after litigation had concluded. They were targeted critiques of a non-final judgment published while the leading appeal was pending and the remaining AT1 cases were frozen awaiting the Supreme Court's ruling. In that context, candour was not an unreasonable burden. It was the minimum cost of credibility.
Italian-language Swiss newspaper Corriere del Ticino was, on that basis, on solid ground in describing the episode as ethically debatable, highlighting both the pending appeals and the discomfort created by one author's prior institutional link to FINMA.
The underlying question is not a radical one. It is straightforward: what level of disclosure should readers expect when former FINMA officials publicly attack a non-final judgment in a live Supreme Court appeal? The Swiss Federal Supreme Court will settle the law on AT1 bonds. Swiss legal academia faced a far smaller test — and, on the evidence so far, has not passed it.
