Credit Suisse board backs says the CEO

Credit Suisse’s board of directors is convinced that Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein is the right person to strategically realign the bank. This realignment can be done by curbing risk appetite, said the Swiss bank‘s chairman in a newspaper interview. When he was asked whether he was planning to replace Gottstein as CEO or take over the operational lead of the bank himself, Antonio Horta-Osorio replied ‘no’ in the interview in SonntagsBlick.

He said that he can only say with certainty that Thomas Gottstein has the full confidence of the board of directors. In the difficult phase that the bank went through, he impressively demonstrated his leadership skills. The right man for the strategic realignment of the bank is him. Horta-Osorio is the chairman since April. He said that the bank had to curb risk appetite. The right incentives were also set while hiring the staffs.

The strategy discussion is not finished so that they cannot talk about it publicly. Then in the interview, Gottstein said that it was extremely important for the chairman and CEO to work together in this current critical phase. Credit Suisse is trying to rebuild its reputation. Because there was a huge loss and suffering in the supply chain finance funds linked to Greensill, over the last year because of the pandemic. The investment fund Archegos were also collapsed. Gottstein said that the bank had thoroughly analyzed its balance sheet. And said that they did not find any cases comparable to Greensill or Archegos.