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Credit Suisse's chairman, Urs Rohner, faces a range of options in the spy scandal. He isn't ruling out that CEO Tidjane Thiam will have to go, according to people close to him. 

Urs Rohner hasn't been a particularly strong figurehead as chairman of Credit Suisse since 2011. The 60-year-old lawyer's biggest coup was hiring Tidjane Thiam to replace Brady Dougan as CEO in 2015. Though Credit Suisse's shares don't show it, Thiam successfully restructured the Swiss bank.

Four years later, the 57-year-old CEO is at the heart of wide-ranging decisions Rohner now faces. After Credit Suisse was embarrassed by revelations that it spied on departing star Iqbal Khan, Rohner is now weighing up Thiam's future, according to a person close to the chairman.

Specter of CEO Exit

Thiam's exit is emerging as one scenario. «Rohner and the board will ultimately have to reach the decision which best serves Credit Suisse, its investors, and stakeholders,» a person close to the chairman. The board is carefully considering the damage to Credit Suisse's reputation that the Paradeplatz snafu has caused, they added. 

Meanwhile, Rohner and the board are waiting on the results of an outside probe of the events by white-collar law firm Homburger. They are looking for two answers from the probe: who ordered Khan tailed, and who knew about the move?

Anger over Arborvitaes

The Khan scandal will stick on Thiam in any event. Even if the CEO didn't order his former top private banker tailed nor even knew of the surveillance operation, Thiam and Khan's apparent fallout over arborvitae shrubs on the property line they share in an upscale suburb of Zurich will stick.

The embarrassing chapters – a confrontation at a private cocktail party with their respective partners present escalating to the surveillance operation last week – dent Thiam's integrity as CEO. In other words can Rohner, when the Homburger results are submitted, stanch the scandal simply by laying blame with a lower-level Credit Suisse employee?

Bumbling Detective Work

Rohner needs to walk a tightrope not just in Switzerland, where the events are without precedent in recent corporate history. Internationally Credit Suisse, as the sixth-largest wealth manager in the world, also has much to lose.