Credit Suisse Adds Senior Deputies to Dougan in Board Overhaul

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Credit Suisse Group AG appointed two investment bankers to its executive board, adding to the bench of managers who could succeed Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan.

Jim Amine and Tim O’Hara were also named co-heads of the investment banking division, joining Gael de Boissard in that role. Eric Varvel, who helped oversee the unit for five years, will step down from the board and assume the role of chairman for the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, the Zurich-based bank said today.

Dougan, who has run Switzerland’s second-biggest bank since 2007, resisted calls from Swiss politicians and some shareholders to step down in May as the bank pleaded guilty in a U.S. tax evasion probe, paying $2.6 billion. By revamping the board, the 55-year-old former investment banker is expanding the number of managers and bolstering the influence of the securities unit.

“This three-way structure is unusual,” said Ismail Erturk, a senior lecturer on banking at Manchester Business School. The move “could be related to succession planning.”

A spokesman for Credit Suisse declines to comment on a possible succession plan for the CEO.

The appointments of Amine, 55, and O’Hara, 50, bring to at least four the board members with investment banking backgrounds, including Dougan, compared with two affiliated with the bank’s money-management businesses. The executive board now has 10 members.

Amine, O’Hara

“The appointments represent a strengthening of the investment bank on the board,” said Andreas Venditti, a Zurich- based analyst at Vontobel with a hold recommendation on the stock. “If you count Dougan as part of the investment bankers’ camp, then that unit has double the weight on the board compared to other businesses.”

Amine will continue to lead the investment-banking department, which includes advisory and underwriting services, and O’Hara will continue to head the equities business, the bank said. De Boissard will keep responsibility for fixed income in addition to his role as head of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

O’Hara, based in New York, joined Credit Suisse in 1988 and has held a number of senior roles at the investment bank. He has helped run global securities, the fixed-income department in North America and was head of global credit products before assuming the role of equities head. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia and a masters of business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

‘Great Momentum’

Amine, also based in New York, began his career as an attorney and worked at Schroders Plc before joining Credit Suisse in 1997. He co-headed global leveraged-finance before taking on leadership roles at the investment-banking department. He is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School.

“In our investment-banking division, Eric Varvel and Gael de Boissard have been instrumental in adapting our business to the new market and regulatory environment,” Chairman Urs Rohner said in the statement. “Jim Amine and Tim O’Hara have also been integral to the success of the division, with our investment- banking department and equities businesses demonstrating strong results and great momentum.”

Helman Sitohang will assume Varvel’s previous role of chief executive officer for Asia Pacific, the bank said. Sitohang, 48, will keep his role as head of the investment bank in the region. Based in Singapore, Sitohang has been with Credit Suisse for 16 years and has been involved in around $150 billion of mergers and acquisitions and capital raisings across the globe, according to the bank.

Varvel, 51, who will continue to be based in New York, will focus on the bank’s most important clients and assisting senior management on strategy. He joined the executive board in 2008 as the head of the EMEA region and led the investment bank since September 2009. Before his appointment to the board, Varvel co- headed the global investment banking department and was the head of the global markets solutions group for more than three years.

Higher Revenues

Prior to that, he spent 15 years in the Asia-Pacific region in a variety of senior roles. He has been with Credit Suisse since 1990.

When the U.S. guilty plea was announced, Dougan said was “very committed” to Credit Suisse and had not considered resigning.

Credit Suisse took a charge of 1.6 billion francs ($1.7 billion) in the second quarter after it became the first global bank in 10 years to plead guilty to a crime in a U.S. courtroom. The U.S. fine pushed down Credit Suisse’s capital ratio, a key measure of financial strength, to 9.3 percent at the end of the first quarter from 10 percent.

Credit Suisse is scheduled to publish earnings for the third quarter on Oct. 23.

Revenue at Credit Suisse’s investment bank rose in the first two months of the quarter, Chief Financial Officer David Mathers told investors last month. Profit at the company’s private banking and wealth management business climbed in the two months from a year earlier because of lower costs, he said.

Last quarter, pretax profit at the investment bank was steady at 752 million francs. Sales benefited from a 14 percent increase in fixed-income revenue to 1.43 billion francs and a 29 percent jump in equity underwriting to 268 million francs. Equity sales and trading revenue fell 15 percent to 1.1 billion francs compared with the year-earlier period.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeffrey Vögeli in Zurich at [e-mail]; Ambereen Choudhury in London at [e-mail]; Elena Logutenkova in Zurich at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elisa Martinuzzi at [e-mail]