Why Asia matters so much to the new boss at Credit Suisse
Tidjane Thiam, the bank's new chief executive, believes in global wealth creation in emerging markets, and profits from the region have doubled over the last year
Flick through the presentation slides Tidjane Thiam and his team ran through with investors when the newly installed Credit Suisse chief executive unveiled second-quarter earnings and it quickly becomes apparent why his first trip two weeks later is to Asia - it is his golden goose and he makes no bones about it.
"What I've made my name in and what I believe in is global wealth creation in emerging markets," Thiam told the "I used to sell insurance, so selling wealth management is riding the same wave frankly in macroeconomic terms. That's what I came here to do."
Thiam was chief executive of Prudential, the international insurance group, before he joined Credit Suisse on July 1.
I am focused on driving the company forward ... I did not come here to build a global investment bank
About 40 per cent, or 6.3 billion Swiss francs (HK$51 billion), of the bank's net new assets were generated in Asia in the three months ended June. The region is the bank's fastest growing globally. Profits have doubled from a year ago and represent 27 per cent of all pre-tax income. Private banking had its best quarter on record for revenues and its strongest first-half profits in eight years.
Present figures like that to other executives and they might well be tempted to head instead to an underperforming region, kick a few butts there and urge local management to learn from their shortcomings.
But Thiam likes to see things differently from the average chief executive. Which is hardly surprising given that he is not the average chief executive - he is an African, born in Cote d'Ivoire, raised and educated in France, began his career at McKinsey, went on to be minister of planning and development in his home country and then returned to the consulting giant as a partner in Paris, all before getting into the insurance business at Britain's Aviva and then Prudential.
The 53-year-old reckons the bigger value is in understanding success.
"I listen to radio and today I was listening to a psychologist who was saying that we don't draw the lessons from our successes," Thiam said. "We just tend to take them and think they are because of our skill. We never look. He was making a good point in that you need to try to understand your successes.
