What is Going On at Credit Suisse?
What is up with Credit Suisse over the last few years? First it had a CEO scandal, where there was a clash between Thiam and some wealth management dude (Asif, whose now at UBS), which tarnished the bank's reputation. Recently had a change in guard again just under a year or so.
Anyone remembers the botched acquisition of DLJ. See article below.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/credit-suisse-pays-p…
More recently, as everyone is aware, CS took the biggest hit with the failed hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management. Such bad risk management. Their LevFin franchise used to be one of the strongest on the Street, not sure how that pans out now. In light of this collapse, they've had bankers leave due to obvious reasons and take a downgrade. Not sure how CS is good at retaining talent -- case in point is Frank Quattrone, who had left to start Qatalyst Partners. Archegos' failure would have massive ripple effects across the industry, in particular at Morgan Stanley and Nomura. The fact that these banks lent generously to him despite his past insider trading scandals, points to the poor underwriting standards in place, but that deviates from the main topic point, which is CS.
Credit Suisse though still has a decent enough brand, and is trading very cheap on a price to tangible book value basis relative to comparable. A couple of questions:
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Their corporate reporting structure just sounds incredibly complex. They are reporting under five divisions, where there must be clear overlap in between. No need for Swiss Universal Bank and Asia Pacific to have their own divisions? Seems like a way of misleading investors by disguising each division’s true profitability. Plus, some of the divisions RoTE and Cost to Income seems out of whack with the industry's average.
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CS still hasn't reviewed its underwriting standards yet. Given the negative consequences of this Archegos Capital Management blow up, would expect better business and risk management sense to prevail at the firm. Doesn’t make any sense as to why is the bank getting into financing of yachts and all these “big boy” hobbies of oligarchs. Carries massive reputational risk for the bank, and probably will be hit by another round of sanctions. Bank should be cutting down its exposure to RWA-heavy activities.
Who disagrees here? Any FIG analyst here?
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