Credit Suisse, which is scaling back its securities division at a slower pace than UBS, is ending relationships with offshore private banking clients from 83 countries with total assets under management of about 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.4 billion), Chief Financial Officer David Mathers said in October. The bank didn’t disclose specific countries, which have an average of 40 million francs to 45 million francs of assets.
“From a good business perspective, it’s important to be here on the ground,” but the compliance and control costs are prohibitive, said Wright, after meeting Credit Suisse clients at the five-star One&Only hotel on Cape Town’s waterfront. “It would be my aspiration to do that in South Africa, but you’ve got some way to go to demonstrate that the business does meet the minimum critical mass to support that.”
Credit Suisse, the largest of 14 Swiss banks under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, helped 22,000 Americans hide as much as $10 billion from the Internal Revenue Service, according to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan apologized in testimony to the subcommittee on Feb. 26, saying a small group of Swiss-based bankers appear to have broken U.S. law and fooled top managers.
That issue wasn’t raised by clients and executives in Johannesburg and Cape Town, said Wright.
“What you’re talking about is an historic legacy and actually our clients are really more interested in what we can do for them,” he said.