The total number of employees and contractors kept rising last year despite the bank exiting prime services.
Credit Suisse has recorded a restructuring expense almost every year for the past five years. The only year it didn’t was in 2019. Despite that, the number of employees and contractors keeps going up.
A review of their unaudited time series released during today’s fourth-quarter and full-year results show the bank took a restructuring charge of about $110 million US dollars in 2021.
Archegos Prompts Exit
Most of that, or $78 million, was borne by the investment bank and likely related to the prime services exit following the Archegos debacle.
Although most of that business’ staff worldwide were promptly shown the door following the strategic decision to exit, the total number of Credit Suisse employees still managed to rise to 50,110 in 2021 from 48,770 a year earlier - a three percent increase.
The gain was even more pronounced when outsourced roles such as contractors and consultants were included, as they were up 7 percent at 66,540 against 61,980 a year earlier.
Repeated Pattern
The same can be seen from 2020’s restructuring charge, which was one and half times last year’s. Despite that, headcount was up for both the total number of employees and contractors.
In fact, the only time it ever fell was during the heady days of former CEO Tidjane Thiam’s reign, when restructuring expenses hovered around $500 million for both years (455 million Swiss francs in 2017 and 626 million francs in 2018).
Although employee numbers fell marginally to 45,680 in 2018 from 46,840 the year before, the number including contractors rose to 59,490 from 46,840.
At this point, both weary employees and shareholders should be asking why these constant changes, after so many years, are having such little impact.
