Credit Suisse forced onto the defensive

When he took over at the helm of Credit Suisse last July, Tidjane Thiam could hardly have expected - just one year on - to be denying reports of the company being broken up and sold off. It has been one of those years for the bank whose share price threatened to drop below CHF10 a week ago. Much of the Swiss media hailed Thiam as a likely saviour of the struggling bank last summer. Most of these headlines have turned sour in a remarkably short time span. “The group will stay intact,” Thiam was forced to tell the SonntagsBlick newspaper on Sunday. “A takeover is not a subject.” While Thiam has been defending the bank’s very future, his boss - Chairman Urs Rohner – has been forced to defend his choice of chief executive. “I am convinced, like the rest of the board, that he is the right man for the job,” Rohner recently told the Handelszeitung newspaper. “He has taken the right measures and will continue to do so.” So what’s gone wrong? Legacy “To be fair to Thiam, ...