A large international bank with its central seat in Switzerland has accumulated tremendous wealth and absorbed many smaller banks, becoming a thorn in the eye of the government of a powerful dictatorship because its oligarchs are gradually transferring all of their assets abroad to evade the ridiculously high taxes and homeopathic interest rates the ministry of commerce and the state bank of the dictatorship mandates. The foreign bank specializes in these clients, waging a "financial war" against the state institutions. The Glorious Leader is angered. Several high-ranking ministers and officials of the secret police and intelligence service meet and decide that something must be done. The following idea is propagnated:
- On a certain day of relatively low stock market activity, "Operation X" starts - the state offers to buy shares of the bank at double or triple price. At the same time, oligarchs whom the government manages to bribe withdraw their accounts and send them to a smaller Swiss bank or to the homeland, where they are offered privileged conditions for the storage of their wealth.
- As soon as the majority of the shares is in the hands of the government - a large advertising campaign in support of the takeover is utilized - the seat of the bank is moved to the capital of the dictatorship and it is registered under the laws of the country, temporarily as a subsidiary of a fake state company. All assets of the bank are transferred, foreign accounts closed and a majority of the personnel fired.
- Finally, the bank is fully nationalized and then dissolved, and the ownership of all money - especially that of the defiant oligarchs - is now in the hands of the state. The last operation is fully legal under the laws of the nation as private banks are actually outlawed and the state reserves the right to dissolve and confiscate any company at will.
My question is:
- Is this plan realistic and could it work out?
- What might be the likely consequences of such a hostile takeover and dissolution? What will be the extent of the economical crisis caused by the operation?
Information:
- The bank has a market capitalization of about 100 billion USD. It is controlled by a fourteen-man board of major shareholders, of which one is a Medwedian national and agent, nine are Swiss nationals, one is an Austrian, one is an American and two are large manufacturing companies represented by their CEO's.
- The dictatorship has a large GDP; as such, about 300 to 400 billion USD are immediately avaliable (from confiscation of private assets, hyper-production, preparatory measures, etc...) to it.
- An additional fund of 100 billion USD has been made for bribing the board.