Credit Suisse defends trading arm as profit rise fails to convince market
Zurich — Credit Suisse defended its global markets trading arm on Thursday, even as losses at the division took the shine off a jump in quarterly profit as the bank wraps up a three-year revamp under CEO Tidjane Thiam. The unit, the focus of Thiam’s cuts and a source of billions of dollars of losses over years, still has an important role to play after the restructuring to focus on managing billionaires’ wealth and scale back investment banking, Thiam said. “GM (global markets) is the lowest returning division in the company. In every portfolio, you will have a lowest-returning division,” he said, as analysts probed him over plans for the unit. “The question is really: does the whole work and does the whole generate good returns?” Switzerland’s second-biggest bank has become more able to absorb trading volatility as it grows wealth management, he said, and further cuts in the global markets business could make it too small to be viable. Third-quarter group net income jumped 74% to S...
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