The head of Credit Suisse’s Swiss division said that “some customers have withdrawn some of their money, but very few have actually closed their accounts.”
Last week, Switzerland’s second-largest bank said it expected a pre-tax loss of up to 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.6 billion) in the fourth quarter and indicated that high-net-worth customers had withdrawn large amounts of money, leading to a sharp drop liquidity, violation of some regulatory limits.
The announcement sent stock prices tumbling and sent the cost of insuring Credit Suisse’s debt against default rising.
“In our Swiss Bank unit, client assets stabilized and we lost a total of 1% of our asset base,” André Helfenstein said in an interview published on Sunday by Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung.
A number of options were floated as ways Credit Suisse could help him get his case back. Helfenstein said that separating the Swiss business from the bank’s international business was “absolutely not an option”.
He also said the sale of the private client business and asset management division was “also not on the table”.
As part of a restructuring plan announced by Credit Suisse last month, the bank also said it would cut thousands of jobs by 2025, including 2,700 by the end of this year.
Helfenstein said the difficult year took a toll on employee morale. “I wouldn’t say demotivation, but some kind of fatigue, and sometimes disappointment,” he said.
