Credit Suisse shakes up board and appoints new wealth management head
Credit Suisse has welcomed back Francesco De Ferrari and named him global head of the bank’s wealth management division, among a series of appointments to its executive board announced this morning.
De Ferrari, who worked at Credit Suisse between 2002 and 2018, will return to the Swiss bank in the new year after a brief stint leading Australian wealth management company AMP.
He retired from AMP in March, after having been appointed in 2018 to “lead the recovery” of the wealth manager after it came under regulatory scrutiny, and will join as CEO of Credit Suisse’s wealth management division as well as interim CEO of Europe, Middle East and Africa.
De Ferrari will join the unit a month after Credit Suisse announced a strategy overhaul to rein in its investment bank and focus on its wealth management division, in an effort to pull back from the prime broking unit that serves hedge funds and slid into a $5.4bn loss from the collapse of US family office Archegos Capital in March.
Credit Suisse chairman António Horta-Osório has spent the last few months planning the much-anticipated structural review, after the bank was embroiled in a series of high-profile scandals, charges and losses, including those from the collapse of Archegos and Greensill.
In October, the Swiss bank was also fined over £147m by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for serious due diligence failings involving two loans worth over $1.3bn and a bond exchange arranged for the Republic of Mozambique in the so-called ‘tuna bonds’ scandal.
Horta-Osorio said De Ferrari has a “a profound knowledge of Credit Suisse and the industry, reinforcing our Executive Board at this critical junction in our journey.”
Christian Meissner, CEO of Credit Suisse’s investment bank division, has been appointed CEO of the Americas; Helman Sitohang and Andre Helfenstein as CEOs of Asia-Pacific and Switzerland respectively; and Mark Hannam has been named as head of internal audit.