27 July 2022 - 18:26With Ulrich Koerner taking over as chief executive officer, Credit Suisse Group AG’s top ranks are looking more like UBS Group AG, suggesting the firm may draw from its crosstown rival’s play book.With Ulrich Körner taking over as CEO, Credit Suisse’s top ranks are looking more like UBS, suggesting the firm may draw from its crosstown rival’s play book.
Credit Suisse’s decision “to transform the investment bank into a capital-light, advisory-led banking business, seems to be similar to the strategy adopted by UBS in 2012,” Citigroup analysts wrote in a note to investors. Körner’s appointment “would seem to suggest a further departure from investment banking”.
Credit Suisse has spent the past three years mired in scandals — starting with a spying fiasco that led to Gottstein taking the reins from Tidjane Thiam — that has left it floundering at a time when many rivals have seized on active markets to thrive. Now with inflation fears and the war in Ukraine spurring more turbulence, Credit Suisse losses have totalled almost Sf4bn in the past three quarters.
Körner was among many candidates, both internal and external, that the bank considered for the top job, Lehmann told reporters on a call. Körner was brought to UBS by its former CEO Oswald Gruebel to cut costs and be a “fixer” on all the post-financial crisis issues the bank was grappling with. He was intimately involved with cutting down UBS’s risk-weighted assets, which is exactly what Credit Suisse is now planning on doing.