The Credit Suisse MD and the team who jumped before the push
It all happens tomorrow. Early in the morning, European time, Credit Suisse will unveil its third quarter results, and with them its big plan. By breakfast, we should know how the bank intends to dig itself out of its trough and whether it will indeed be making 5,000 job cuts.
The revelations are likely to be of particular interest to people in Credit Suisse's credit sales and trading business, which has been leaking staff to Deutsche Bank and elsewhere, and which stands closest to the precipice. It will also be of interest to staff in the securitized products group, which is probably being sold to either Mitsubishi UFG or Apollo. They, too, have been leaving and will be interested to learn whether their new owners will be a gentle Japanese bank or a private equity and credit company with a reputation for being anything but.
As Credit Suisse prepares for the big reveal, however, some of its top performers are already comfortably ensconced elsewhere. They're not in London, Zurich or New York but in São Paulo, Brazil.
Two months ago, Stephane Lopes, the global head of financing for trading solutions at Credit Suisse, left. Lopes, who is French, had worked for Credit Suisse for 15 years, always in Brazil. Leaving his deferred stock on the table, he quit for Banco Modal, a Brazilian investment banking firm in the process of merging with Group XP, the largest broker dealer in Latin America. Lopes is a partner at the firm, and has founded a new strategic financing and special situations desk there. He has also assembled a new team, comprised of various people from Credit Suisse.
His new/old colleagues include: Diego O'Keefe, a former Credit Suisse managing director who spent 11 years at the bank; Bruna Barberato, a former CS analyst; Fernanda Filgueiras Medeiros, a former Credit Suisse director in fixed income structuring and sales; Fernando Amá Stephan, another ex-CS structurer; and Guilherme Vital Brasil Lorenzo Fernandez, a former CS associate.
Writing on LinkedIn, Lopes says they are the "dream team", reunited. For Credit Suisse, however, the exits look like more of a nightmare and are the kind of the thing the bank has been trying to avoid elsewhere with its retention bonuses. Unsuccessful attempts were seemingly made to persuade individuals like O'Keefe to stay, but he left anyway. As Credit Suisse battles to retain other key people globally, the only consolation is possibly that legal restrictions on team moves are weaker in Brazil than elsewhere, making this kind of thing more likely.
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