Pierre-Olivier Bouée, the long-time right-hand man to Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, is mulling legal steps against the bank, finews.asia has learned.
He spent the biggest chunk of his career alongside Tidjane Thiam – Pierre-Olivier Bouée now faces an uncertain professional career. Credit Suisse's law firm found Bouée coordinated two separate spy schemes on top executives at the bank.
Credit Suisse chairman Urs Rohner termed the surveillance «unforgivable,» and said neither he nor CEO Thiam had been aware of it. Bouée was sacked from his job as the bank's operating chief last month (he was initially permitted to step down).
COO a Scapegoat?
For many observers, the Frenchman is a scapegoat: the notion that Bouée set two spy operations on Iqbal Khan and Peter Goerke into motion without anyone else's knowledge, as Credit Suisse's law firm Homburger found, is difficult to believe.
The 48-year-old has engaged legal counsel to evaluate his options, people familiar with the matter told finews.asia. Bouée, who didn't comment, left more than $4 million of vested Credit Suisse instruments on the table when the bank decided to sack him.
Future at Stake
The spy scandal has deepened to include potentially damaging details: a Swiss prosecutor reportedly wants to probe a loud confrontation last January between Thiam and Khan, who are neighbors in an upscale lakeside town near Zurich.
For Bouée, who earned a fixed salary of 2 million Swiss francs ($2.1 million) and a bonus of nearly 5 million francs last year, the matter is about reputation as it is about money. Bouée, who moved his family to Switzerland for the job, may find it difficult to clinch a similar finance industry job pending an investigation by Swiss regulator Finma.
Vexing About-Face
Bouée hasn't made any public comment on the scandal. Credit Suisse, together with law firm Homburger, has portrayed a covert operation within the bank: that Bouée lied about the second case of spying, used unofficial chat channels to coordinate, and deleted messages to conceal it. His motivation for doing so remains entirely unclear.
The sacking will be particularly vexing for Bouée because he and Thiam go way back: they met nearly 20 years ago at McKinsey. Bouée followed the French-Ivorian executive to British insurer Aviva in 2002 and, six years later, to Prudential, where Thiam had secured the CEO post.
Close Ally vs Cool Distance
The duo repeated the Pru pattern four years ago when they joined the Swiss wealth manager together. Known within Credit Suisse as «POB,» Bouée was a key Thiam ally, and responsible for executing his boss' vision of the bank's three-year turnaround concluded last year.
The two were close by several accounts, including in British media, but Thiam has rejected this depiction, saying he always maintained professional boundaries to his direct reports including Bouée.
