The top Credit Suisse guys still waiting on UBS
Credit Suisse people haven't exactly been hanging around since UBS rescued them in their hour of need. Glenn Renwick, a Credit Suisse healthcare MD has become the latest to exit for Deutsche Bank today, joining numerous colleagues who've already taken refuge in the German bank. Others have gone to Citi, Mizuho and Truist. Teams have been heavily depleted. However, some core Credit Suisse people are holding strong.
As UBS prepares to offer insight into what happens next with Credit Suisse when it reports its results tomorrow, one of the big unresolved questions is what happens to David Miller and those loyal to him.
Miller is the man who was/is the global head of investment banking & capital markets at Credit Suisse. He is the man who was expected to run CS First Boston with Michael Klein (although there were equally possibly spurious suggestions that Miller had been kept out of that loop.) He's a Credit Suisse veteran who's been at the bank since 1997 and who has a cluster of almost equally long serving staff around him. Their plans remain obscure.
Miller's men include the likes of Jason Safriet, Credit Suisse's US head of credit sales, who joined DLJ before it was acquired by Credit Suisse in 1999. Despite rumors that Safriet and team members like Brian Buchichio, Joseph Friedman, Brian Harris, and Micky McPartland were going to Truist, they still seem to be in their seats. So, too, is Wayne Powless, Credit Suisse's head of investment grade credit sales.
"These guys are top-notch," says one insider. They were the muscle that enabled Credit Suisse to flex in US credit.
Will UBS want them? In the call accompanying its first quarter results today, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said the bank has no ambitions to be top of the league tables in leveraged finance or to originate and store risk but will be happy to plan on the margins. This is a departure from Credit Suisse, which was a leader in the space and committed its own balance sheet.
Moreover, UBS has spent the past year strengthening its own US credit trading business with the likes of Andrew Goldman, who was hired from Goldman Sachs' high yield credit trading business last July. Goldman has been adding to his team with people like Patrick White, who joined from Credit Suisse (fortuitously) in January, and Daniel Jacobson who joined in January from Barclays. It's not clear whether Goldman wants or needs anyone else, particularly if they come with the attitude that they might be superior to existing staff.
Nor is it clear, though, what people like Miller could do instead. After decades at Credit Suisse, a job running high yield or leveraged finance is unlikely to suffice. Miller would probably only be happy with a job as the head of the investment bank somewhere else, suggests one observer. But where?
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