MOVES - CS revamps structure, rehires De Ferrari to lead wealth
Credit Suisse has rehired Francesco De Ferrari as CEO of wealth management and given investment bank boss Christian Meissner responsibility for all its Americas business too, to complete a major overhaul of leadership and structure in a bid to revive the bank and improve risk management.
Credit Suisse said from January 1 it will be organised into four business divisions – wealth management, investment bank, Swiss bank and asset management – and four geographic regions – EMEA, Americas, Switzerland and APAC.
The new appointments and structure have been implemented by Antonio Horta-Osorio, who took over as chairman in April. It is designed to "allow for the best possible implementation of the strategy of strengthening, simplifying and investing for growth", the Swiss bank said on Monday.
Horta-Osorio said De Ferrari will play "a crucial role" in delivering on the new strategy. "Risk management will be at the core of all our actions, with the board of directors and the executive board together driving a culture that reinforces the importance of accountability and responsibility across the entire bank," he said.
De Ferrari previously worked for Credit Suisse from 2002 to 2018 and held roles including head of private banking for Asia-Pacific and CEO of South East Asia and Frontier Markets and CEO for private banking in Italy. He is rejoining from Australian financial firm AMP Ltd, where he was CEO from December 2018 to June 2021, and since then has been running AMP Capital, the investment management arm. Between 1990 and 2001, De Ferrari worked at firms including Nestle and McKinsey.
De Ferrari will join Credit Suisse's executive board on January 1 and be based in Zurich. He will report to CEO Thomas Gottstein.
De Ferrari will be interim CEO of EMEA. Meissner has been appointed as CEO of the Americas region. Helman Sitohang has been appointed CEO of APAC and Andre Helfenstein is CEO of Switzerland.
Helfenstein is also head of the Swiss bank, and Ulrich Koerner heads asset management.
Philipp Wehle, who has been CEO of international wealth management since 2019, will become chief finance officer of wealth management and head client segment management for global wealth.
Credit Suisse said it plans to reintegrate parts of its sustainability, research and investment solutions business into the global business divisions, with research going into the investment bank and investment solutions and products moving into wealth management.
The bank only set up the new initiative in July 2020 pulling the research and IS&P function into a new team focused on sustainability. Lydie Hudson, the former chief compliance officer who was appointed head of the unit, will leave the bank after 14 years there.
The bank said it had also hired Mark Hannam from PricewaterhouseCoopers as head of internal audit.
Credit Suisse said it has also set up a new board of directors structure to improve the effectiveness and governance of subsidiary boards.