Dario Item wears many hats as an attorney for aggrieved investors of Credit Suisse and the publisher of the obscure «Antigua News,» becoming a key figure in the tug-of-war over the bank's multi-billion writedown on mandatory convertible bonds.

When it comes to the latest upheavals in the financial world's executive floors, the «Financial Times» is usually well-informed early on. It's also a common tactic at the local banking hub to prepare the markets for profound news through the British newspaper.

Exceptionally well-documented

Yet, in the heated legal battle concerning Credit Suisse's (CS) mandatory convertible bonds (AT1-Bonds), where nearly 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.7 billion) are at stake for the parties involved, the British paper was repeatedly outpaced by the obscure «Antigua News»: Time and again, the news portal on the Caribbean island, unknown outside of it, reported faster and, above all, was exceptionally well-informed about the negotiations.

This was the case again this week. The portal made public excerpts from a letter that the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) sent to the Federal Administrative Court in St. Gallen last March. Hundreds of investors' complaints, affected by Finma's writedown of CS's AT1 bonds on March 19, 2023, are being adjudicated there.

Finma argued for the protection of taxpayers

According to the report, in the letter, the regulator resisted making documents about the March action accessible to the complainants, arguing that doing so could potentially harm Swiss taxpayers if this information were used, especially in foreign courts.

Finma's approach did not sit well with the AT1 investors, as the «Antigua News» report clearly showed. The emotions were strongly felt by the investors, confirmed the website’s publisher Dario Item, a lawyer from Ticino who also represents AT1 investors, among others. He obtained excerpts from the Finma letter through his network, Item explains – he writes the reports on CS himself.

Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda

Item's involvement with «Antigua News» comes through one of the many hats he wears professionally. Thus, the 51-year-old lawyer serves as the ambassador of the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda in Spain, the Principality of Monaco, and the Principality of Liechtenstein; this in addition to his practice as a lawyer at the I&P Law Office in Lugano, TI.

In the billion-dollar case around CS's mandatory convertibles, he acts as a lone figure alongside international law firms like Quinn Emanuel and Pallas – and yet, Item still manages to lead his colleagues. «Antigua News» has long become mandatory reading for them.

The native Neapolitan spices his biting articles with excerpts from documents, threatening to embarrass Finma as well as the major banks UBS and CS on multiple occasions.

Condemned to wait

Regarding the complaint before the Federal Administrative Court, the active Item is also condemned to wait.

It's difficult to make predictions about when the authority will comment on the case. «As far as I know, the court has not yet provided the parties with the complete responses to the complaints from Finma and CS/UBS, even though they were submitted last year,» says the lawyer. «So, I would indeed be very pleased if we received the complete responses.»