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He may have inherited a more troubled bank and there continues to be a distance between the two in AuMs, but Credit Suisse's Tidjane Thiam may have a lot to teach the industry-leader UBS.

«Only the fourth quarter of 2008 was tougher than the fourth quarter of 2018,» said Tidjane Thiam as he delivered results for Credit Suisse on a recent sunny day in Zurich.

The statement was not meant to set the scene for excuses as to why performance may have slipped, instead, it set the context against which – some might say despite which – Thiam delivered the bank into profitable territory for the first time since 2014.

Synchronized Meltdown

What Went Right For Thiam? Not much, certainly not the markets which he himself described as «we rarely see this», referring to the synchronized meltdown of several asset classes last year. What Thiam did right, though, is a reassuringly longer list.

Thiam resolutely sat out the bidding war for talent in Asia that drove costs up for almost every large private bank in the region. «In Asia, we have the same number of relationship managers today as we did three years ago, but we have one and a half time the assets,» he was then able to say.

Biggest Employer in Asian Private Banking

By comparison, UBS – which is the biggest employer in Asian private banking – grew consistently for each of those years. The pool of total available talent in the region in those years grew in the single digits so it is a safe assumption that banks that consistently grew headcount ended up paying a premium to market.