Credit Suisse Group AG, one of the largest investment banks in the globe, on Wednesday announced that it was appointing a new Chief Executive Officer for the financial services firm.
The outgoing CEO of Credit Suisse, Thomas Gottstein, said in a statement that it was time for a leadership change in the investment bank and he himself announced his successor.
Ulrich Koerner, who is currently the head of asset management at Credit Suisse, would take over the post of Chief Executive Officer on 1st August 2022.
Ulrich Koerner, who started his career as an auditor with Price Waterhouse in 1989, later became a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Later, he joined Credit Suisse in 1998 as CFO for Switzerland. He went on to become CEO of the Switzerland division of Credit Suisse and even served as an executive board member in the investment bank company.
He left Credit Suisse in 2009 to join the UBS group and become Asset management division head in 2014. He worked there till 2020 and joined Credit Suisse as the head of the asset management division in March 2021
According to Thomas Gottstein, the performance of the bank was severely affected by various external factors such as geopolitical crisis, macroeconomic elements and economic downturns in major economies. All these led to the bank posting poor financial numbers in the second quarter of the current financial year.
Poor performance by the investment division of the financial service firm coupled with a higher allotment of assets for litigation and such hurt the bank very much.
He also added in his statement that it was a privilege and honour to work with Credit Suisse.
Thomas Gottstein who complete his PhD from the University of Zurich in Finance and Accounting joined Credit Suisse in 1999 after leaving his job at UBS Group. He went on to become head of domestic operations of the Swiss division of Credit Suisse and was appointed as CEO of the banking company in 2020 February.
Recent Controversies reeling Credit Suisse
Since 2020, the Switzerland-based bank has been under gunpoint for various controversial economic and financial reasons.
Credit Suisse was forced to shut down its supply chain investment funds connected to Greensill Capitals as the financial firm based in the UK and Australia ran out of money. In a similar incident, Credit Suisse lost nearly 4.7 billion dollars when New York-based Archegos Capital defaulted on a large amount of money to financial firms as it failed to repay on margin calls.
Credit Suisse is also facing various criminal and financial crime charges for facilitating money laundering for illicit drug transactions and human trafficking activities.