mar, Mar 28th 2023
Amidst a government investigation into who is at fault for Credit Suisse’s demise before it was purchased by UBS, former CS chairman Urs Rohner announced that he has no intention of giving back any of the millions of Swiss francs he earned while at the helm.
Rohner, 63, served on Credit Suisse’s board of directors for 12 years, first as vice president for two years and then as president for 10. He served as president from 2011 and stepped down in 2021. During those combined 12 years he earned CHF52 million as a salary, according to Ethos Foundation, a Swiss shareholder investment group.
Rohner does not intend to pay back any of those millions he said using a spokesperson to relay the message to local news outlet 20 minutes.
“As Chairman of the Board of Directors, he didn’t get any bonuses, so there’s nothing to repay,” the spokesperson said. They added that Rohner volunteered to waive his CHF5 million in bonuses that was due at the end of his contract. He received most of his salary in cash as opposed to in shares like many of his colleagues, according to the outlet.
While Swiss financial regulator FINMA investigates Credit Suisse, the government has ordered a freeze to be put on bank bonuses.
During his tenure, Rohner oversaw millions lost in international lawsuits, billions lost in bad investments, employee scandals and plummeting stock prices. Rohner says he is wary to appear in public today as he currently feels “socially ostracized.”
Credit Suisse’s CEO from 2015 to 2020, Tidjane Thiam, wrote an editorial in the Financial Times defending his record at Credit Suisse.
“Since I left the bank in February 2020, I have mostly refrained from commenting on Credit Suisse, but the turn of events now compels me to speak,” Thiam writes. “When I stepped down as the chief executive of Credit Suisse, it had just posted its highest profits for 10 years after a deep restructuring.”
“Credit Suisse was making nearly as much profit as its new owner UBS” before Thiam left, he writes; adding “Its current plight saddens me.”
While Credit Suisse may have been faring better financially in 2020, Thiam left amidst a FINMA investigation into a corporate espionage case that he was at the center of; a case that revealed “serious organizational shortcomings” at the bank.
The spying scandal began at a New Year’s Eve party held at Thiam’s home in a wealthy Zürich suburb. One of the guests, the bank’s then-wealth management chief Iqbal Khan, remarked on Thiam’s garden, which “set off a bitter feud between the two alpha males.”
The feud was never resolved and Khan left Credit Suisse seven months later for a position at its rival bank, UBS. At some point around Khan’s departure, Thiam and others at Credit Suisse allegedly began spying on Khan to, they say, prevent him from poaching private bankers to UBS.
Khan reported to authorities that he believed he was being spied on after three men chased him and his wife through the streets of Zürich by car and on foot. An investigation ensued that appeared to clear Thiam’s name, but the soap opera of events ended in him stepping down from his CEO position. Moreover, Thiam’s top lieutenant and the bank’s head of security were fired; and, a consultant involved with the espionage took his own life.
The saga that is and was Credit Suisse continues.
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