The man who helmed Credit Suisse apologized to investors at the 167-year-old bank’s final shareholder meeting near Zurich on Tuesday — just weeks after the lender was bought out by rival UBS in a government-brokered deal worth $3.2 billion.
Some shareholders took to the stage to blast the bank’s leadership and demand answers.
“It is a sad day. For all of you, and for us,” Axel Lehmann, the bank’s chairman, told investors who gathered at a hockey arena with 15,000 seat capacity on Tuesday.
“I am truly sorry,” said Lehmann. “I apologize that we were no longer able to stem the loss of trust.”
“Until the end, we fought hard to find a solution,” Lehmann told shareholders on Tuesday. “But ultimately, there were only two options: deal or bankruptcy.”
“The merger had to go through,” said Lehmann. He added that five board members would not stand for re-election.
Credit Suisse chair Axel Lehmann grimaces during a meeting with shareholders in Zurich on Tuesday. APAdvisory firm Ethos, which represents pension funds comprising between 3% and 5% of shareholders, decried the “greed and incompetence of its managers” as well as pay that reached “unimaginable heights”, as it prepared to challenge top executives at the meeting.
AFP via Getty Images“Shareholders have lost considerable amounts of money and thousands of jobs are on the line,” it said.
Credit Suisse CEO Ulrich Koerner, who returned to helm the bank in 2021 after the lender was rocked by high-profile scandals, told shareholders that he had come back to “tackle the problems that existed and build a new Credit Suisse.”
Angry shareholders attended the meeting in a hockey arena in Zurich. AP
Lehmann told shareholders that he was “truly sorry” about the bank’s collapse. AFP via Getty Images“In short, I wanted to create an organization that our shareholders, our clients and all our employees could be proud of,” Koerner told shareholders.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t succeed in the end. We ran out of time.”
“This fills me with sorrow,” he said.
Koerner added: “What has happened over the past few weeks will continue to affect me personally and many others for a long time to come.”
Earlier this week, Switzerland’s federal prosecutor announced an investigation into the UBS takeover of Credit Suisse.
The prosecutor, based in the Swiss capital Bern, is looking into potential breaches of the country’s criminal law by government officials, regulators and executives at the two banks, which agreed on an emergency merger last month to avoid a meltdown in the country’s financial system.
There were “numerous aspects of events around Credit Suisse” that warranted investigation and which needed to be analysed to “identify any criminal offences that could fall within the competence of the [prosecutor]”, it said in a statement.
“The Office of the Attorney General wants to proactively fulfil its mandate and responsibility to contribute to a clean Swiss financial centre and has set up a monitoring system so that it can take action immediately on any issues that fall within its area of responsibility,” it added.
