Credit Suisse plans to present the results of its strategy review at an investor’s day on Thursday following the publication of the quarterly balance sheet. Experts expect organizational and individual changes in personnel. On the other hand, they consider a massive renovation to be unlikely.
When Chairman of the Board of Directors Horta-Osorio, previously head of the troubled British Lloyds, was elected President of Credit Suisse at the end of April, he spoke plainly: He had never experienced a crisis like the one at the Swiss institute. He was referring to the collapse of the hedge fund Archegos Capital, which cost the second largest Swiss bank five billion francs, and the emergency liquidation of funds managed together with Greensill. In addition, there was the shadowing of a former top manager who had cost CEO Tidjane Thiam the job last year, as well as bribery and fraud proceedings in connection with loans to Mozambique. “There are difficult times and tough decisions ahead of us,” he said at the time.
For a chairman of the board of directors, Horta-Osorio has an unusually large amount of influence on day-to-day business through a special committee. For him, the focus is on a cultural change and the strengthening of risk management. The shareholders have since elected two risk experts to the board of directors. The executive board is to be strengthened with two top executives from Goldman Sachs in early 2022. Investors have not yet been convinced: while the European banking index has gained a quarter in value since the end of February, the price of the CS share slipped by a quarter.
The strategy will be presented on Thursday at an investor conference in London. The publication comes earlier than expected, the bank had previously announced a time until the end of the year. The focus on wealth management for millionaires and billionaires is unlikely to change. In order to sharpen the strategy, however, Bank of America analysts had brought the institute into a split. In the current list, the goal of a return on equity of ten percent cannot be achieved, but it can be achieved with an exit from investment banking. Other experts and also company insiders consider such a step unlikely; It is too important to have your own investment banking, especially for the super-rich customers. A sale of sub-areas such as asset management, major acquisitions or a merger with another institute are also apparently not an issue for the bank. “Credit Suisse has to do its homework first before it can consider anything else,” said an insider.