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Credit Suisse’s C.E.O. to Step Down Credit Suisse C.E.O. Tidjane Thiam to Step Down
(about 3 hours later)
Credit Suisse said on Friday that its chief executive, Tidjane Thiam, will step down, the biggest casualty of a spying scandal last year that tainted the Swiss bank.Credit Suisse said on Friday that its chief executive, Tidjane Thiam, will step down, the biggest casualty of a spying scandal last year that tainted the Swiss bank.
Mr. Thiam will resign on Feb. 14 after presenting the bank’s latest financial results, the company said. He will be replaced by Thomas Gottstein, a longtime veteran of the company who currently leads its Swiss operations. Mr. Thiam will resign on Feb. 14 after presenting the bank’s latest financial results, the company said. He will be succeeded by Thomas Gottstein, a longtime veteran of the company who leads its Swiss operations.
The announcement came as a surprise. Mr. Thiam had been cleared of wrongdoing in a damaging scandal last year, in which Credit Suisse executives were found to have authorized surveillance of a top wealth-management executive who left to join a rival, UBS. The announcement came as a surprise. Mr. Thiam, who joined the Zurich-based bank in 2015 with a charge of turning the company around, was cleared of wrongdoing in a corporate spying scandal involving a former employee last year.
Indeed, several major shareholders had urged Credit Suisse’s board to back Mr. Thiam. “Tidjane has made an enormous contribution to Credit Suisse since he joined us,” said Urs Rohner, chairman of the board, in a statement. “It is to his credit that Credit Suisse is standing on a very solid foundation and has returned successfully to profit.”
Indeed, several major shareholders recently urged Credit Suisse’s board to back Mr. Thiam, who had managed to steady profit at the bank, where a drive for revenue at any cost had pushed traders to take outsize positions in risky and hard-to-sell securities.
Mr. Thiam turned Credit Suisse away from the volatility of its investment bank to embrace its more reliable wealth management division. That strategy had appeared to be working: The bank reported a doubling of profit in the third quarter of last year.
But the department that had helped this turnaround produced an embarrassing episode of corporate surveillance, which led to the resignation of the bank’s chief operating officer, Pierre-Olivier Bouée, in October.
Mr. Bouée had ordered Credit Suisse’s head of security services to track Iqbal Khan, its former head of wealth management, who previously left the bank for the competitor UBS after a personal disagreement with Mr. Thiam.
Mr. Khan was followed in order to see if he was trying to poach employees or clients, which would have been a breach of his Credit Suisse contract. But the investigation turned messy after Mr. Khan confronted the corporate spy outside a Zurich restaurant in mid-September last year.
Mr. Khan then filed a criminal complaint, which led to an investigation by Zurich’s public prosecutor. The spying efforts had not produced any evidence that Mr. Khan was trying to poach employees or clients.
An investigation commissioned by Credit Suisse, conducted by an outside law firm, found that Mr. Thiam and other executives had not been aware of the surveillance effort. In October, Mr. Rohner, the chairman of the board, said, “We strongly reject any and all assertions made over the last days that call into question the personal and professional integrity of our C.E.O.”
Mr. Thiam on Friday maintained again that he knew nothing of the spying effort. “It undoubtedly disturbed Credit Suisse and caused anxiety and hurt,” he said. “I regret that this happened, and it should never have taken place.”
But the incident was damaging for the bank, which had spent years trying to put its house in order, only to be faced with questions about whether the chief executive was out of the loop on a corporate spying effort and, if he was, what else might be happening under his management that he did not know about.
The company will hand the reins to a familiar executive in Mr. Gottstein, who has been at the firm for more than 20 years and has worked in the investment banking and private banking divisions.
“Based on his deep and comprehensive experience in our business and in view of his impressive performance as head of our Swiss bank and his respect amongst our clients and employees, Thomas Gottstein is excellently positioned to lead Credit Suisse into the future,” said Mr. Rohner.
Credit Suisse shares were trading about 3.5 percent lower Friday morning.