Credit Suisse chief executive Thiam resigns

Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of Swiss bank Credit Suisse Group AG, tendered his resignation last Friday amidst an ongoing scandal about the bank’s practice of spying on its employees. Thiam will formally step down on February 14, after presenting the bank’s financial results for 2019. He will be replaced by Thomas Gottstein, the head of the bank’s Swiss operations.

Thiam, who joined Credit Suisse in 2015, was formerly the CEO of Prudential Group and before that, an Ivory Coast cabinet minister. His initial mandate at Credit Suisse was to oversee a massive restructuring of the bank, including scaling back its investment banking division and cutting costs across multiple departments in an attempt to reduce losses. The restructuring was ultimately successful, although at the cost of thousands of jobs.

However, in September 2019 it was discovered that the bank was spying on a former executive who had left for rival UBS AG. A second incident came to light in December, again of an executive who had left the bank. And in early February, Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported that Credit Suisse had also spied on Greenpeace in order to find out when the environmental group would next demonstrate against the bank. Although Thiam has denied involvement in the spying cases, the board of directors decided that he should step down.

The CEO-designate, Gottstein, is a Credit Suisse veteran, having spent 20 years at the bank, mostly in investment banking and equity markets roles. He was appointed CEO of Swiss Universal Bank, the Swiss division of Credit Suisse, in 2015.

Credit Suisse traditionally has a Swiss national as either its CEO or chairman. Hence, observers have speculated that Thiam’s replacement by Gottstein could pave the way for the bank to have a non-Swiss chairman in the near future.