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Tidjane Thiam is on the home stretch of being able to tick off all his goals at Credit Suisse as achieved. But the Swiss bank is masterful in selling mediocrity as a milestone, finews.asia observes from the latest results.

Investors are applauding Credit Suisse's achievements in its full-year results: a slight rise in revenue, tough as nails on spending, and a steadily growing private banking franchise underpinned the stock's gains on Wednesday and banished the fact that the bank had just posted its third consecutive net loss.

CEO Tidjane Thiam can take credit for the turnaround strategy: Credit Suisse is considerably slimmer, more efficient, and most importantly, more solid than it was when he arrived in 2015. This is the result of Thiam's gargantuan restructure which may have cost thousands of bank staff their jobs, but has also transformed Credit Suisse into a far more focused competitor in its three main arms and key geographic markets.

Suffering Shareholders

He also managed to persuade Credit Suisse's long-suffering investors to inject another 10 billion Swiss francs into the bank, and to lift revenue in a generally stagnating setting for banks.

The French-Ivorian top executive is also masterful at presenting his achievements in the best possible light. It is only under close scrutiny that investors will find the open wounds that Credit Suisse still carries, or the targets it is miles from meeting. The following points are flies in the ointment of Thiam's results:

1. Negative Swiss Figures

Thomas Gottstein, head of the Swiss bank at Credit Suisse, needs to produce a pretax profit of 2.3 billion francs this year – a target set by Thiam. The task seems Herculean given the latest set of figures. Almost all numbers have a minus in comparison with the year-earlier period. Net revenues for instance are down 6 percent, in private banking the figure is even higher at 11 percent. Pretax profit fell 260 million francs to 1.77 billion as a consequence.

Saving more than 500 million francs within 10 months seems nigh on impossible. And the bank has been saving little enough despite a cut in branches and slashing 1,600 jobs. Gottstein still has to trim the headcount by 300. The cost-income-ratio increased 2.4 basis points to almost 66 percent.

Net new money had a negative development. The bank had an outflow of more than 9 billion francs at the Swiss bank. It is down to rising equity prices that client assets increased slightly to 355 billion. Should stock markets continue to sag throughout the year, Gottstein may lose yet another support pillar.

2. Vexing Asian Markets

Thiam has cared deeply about Asia ever since his days as a young graduate, when he spent six months in China as a reward for stellar university marks. The region was a top priority for him in his overhaul of Credit Suisse, but vexed him last year.