alliance chief economic adviser well-known economist Mohamed El Erian allegedly said Credit Suisse Group AG CS get over UBS Group AG UBS was not the best solution, but still dominated the other two options available.

“It shows you the complexity of what they had to do. Look, that wasn’t the best solution, but it dominated the other two, which is either nationalization or trying to wind down the bank,” El-Erian said told Bloomberg TV. “It’s not clean but from the options available this was the best they could have had.”

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Earlier, UBS agreed to pay 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.25 billion) in shares to acquire Credit Suisse. Under the terms, Credit Suisse shareholders will receive 1 UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares they hold, equivalent to a purchase price of 0.76 Swiss francs ($0.82) per share.

Bailout: However, the economist said the rescue could be considered a bailout. “The phrase ‘bailout’ has become such a horrible phrase that everyone avoids it. They do everything they can to say it’s not a bailout, but then they can’t explain why money is being deployed,” El-Erian noted.

He argued it was a bailout because “they’re involved with it [a] systemically important bank.”

“Of course you will always have something to do with it [a] systemically important bank at the time of the market turmoil. By definition, this is what happens when a systemically important bank gets into trouble. But they just don’t want to use that expression,” he said.

Credit Suisse announced on Sunday that 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.24 billion) of its additional Tier 1 debt will be written down to zero by order of the Swiss regulator FINMA as part of the rescue merger with UBS.

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