New Credit Suisse supremo Tidjane Thiam will be back in Asia this week meeting with the senior management of the Swiss lender in the region and no doubt rallying the troops with some motivational messages.
He is scheduled to conduct town hall meetings in Singapore and Hong Kong in what will be a fact-finding and introspective look at the Asian business.
When Tidjane Thiam’s name was announced as the new CEO the news of his move added almost $3 billion to Credit Suisse's market value and cut Prudential's by nearly $2 billion.
Thiam’s experience and empathy for Asia should be of comfort to the Credit Suisse employees throughout the region. While at Prudential Thiam concentrated on Asia to drive profits and that template should serve him well again.
Thiam has been quoted as saying he is keen to recalibrate the business towards private banking and wealth management with less resources going into investment banking. He has also said the bank would consider raising headcount or buying a lesser peer group business to quickly bulk up the private banking business.
In a region where many mid sized wealth managers are struggling with costs and lack of scale this may be his best option. Growing the business organically will not be easy or quick enough for his honeymoon period. There is a dearth of truly talented wealth managers in the region and merely buying them in would eat into the banks already tight cost income ratio with no guarantee of assets following the new hires.
