[ad_1]
Credit Suisse has announced a sweeping overhaul of key executives, as the Swiss lender steps up its effort to move on from a succession of crises that helped drive it to a first-quarter loss.
Switzerland’s second-biggest lender said on Wednesday that its chief financial officer, head of Asia Pacific and general counsel would be leaving, completing a revamp of its executive board over the past year that has only spared chief executive Thomas Gottstein and the head of its domestic bank.
The changes come as Credit Suisse tries to draw a line under the twin scandals involving failed supply chain finance group Greensill Capital and defunct family office Archegos that engulfed it last year. The crises led to $10bn of clients’ assets being frozen and a $5.5bn trading loss, the biggest in the bank’s 166-year history.
Alongside its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, Credit Suisse said that David Mathers, who has been CFO since 2010, will leave the group once a successor is found. Helman Sitohang, head of Apac will be replaced by co-head of investment banking in Apac Edwin Low in June, while general counsel Romeo Cerutti will move aside in July for Markus Diethelm, who previously held a similar role at UBS.
Gottstein said on Wednesday that the bank’s decision to tighten its controls and risk appetite following the crises “had an adverse impact on our net revenues” in the first three months of the year.
The bank reported a 42 per cent fall in revenues compared with the same period last year, driven by a 51 per cent decline in investment banking revenues and 44 per cent drop in wealth management. Overall, it reported a SFr428mn ($444mn) loss for the quarter.
Last week Credit Suisse revealed it had set aside a further SFr600mn for litigation provisions in the first quarter, taking the total to SFr703mn for what it described as developments in legal matters that started more than a decade ago.
Gottstein, who has insisted he is best placed to lead the bank through what it has described as a transition year, added that “the first quarter of 2022 has been marked by volatile market conditions and client risk aversion”.
[ad_2]
Source link