NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters) - UBS must face two

lawsuits by investors who said the former Credit Suisse

defrauded them prior to its March 2023 demise with false and

misleading statements about its financial condition, a U.S.

judge ruled on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan said Core

Capital Partners may sue on behalf of U.S. purchasers of Credit

Suisse Additional Tier 1 bonds, which a Swiss regulator ordered

written down to zero as part of UBS' rescue of that bank.

McMahon also said U.S. purchasers of Credit Suisse's

American depositary shares and several other bond issues may

pursue their separate lawsuit, which she refused to dismiss last

September, as a group in a class action.

She declined to combine the two lawsuits, after Core Capital

accused the lead plaintiff in the other case, a New York

University engineering professor, of having "abandoned" the AT1

bondholders.

UBS declined to comment.

Other defendants include Credit Suisse's former chief

executive Ulrich Koerner, former chairman Axel Lehmann and

former chief financial officer Dixit Joshi. Their lawyers did

not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AT1 bonds are a capital cushion that can support banks

during market turmoil.

Though they rank above shares in banks' capital structures,

Switzerland's financial regulator FINMA ordered Credit Suisse to

write down 16 billion Swiss francs (now about $20 billion) of

the bonds, while letting UBS buy that bank for $3 billion.

The writedown shocked investors and prompted many lawsuits

in the United States and Europe.

In seeking a dismissal of Core Capital's lawsuit, the

defendants said the FINMA-ordered writedown, not any alleged

fraudulent misstatements, caused the bondholder losses.

But the judge found it plausible that disclosures of the

defendants' alleged fraud caused the value of the AT1 bonds to

decline, "ultimately culminating in the eventual write-down of

all Credit Suisse AT1 bonds to a value of zero."

In February 2024, McMahon dismissed a separate U.S. investor

lawsuit blaming two decades of "continuous mismanagement" for

Credit Suisse's collapse.