Two senior Credit Suisse executives are leaving the bank as it deals with the fallout from billions of dollars of losses in the blow-ups of Archegos Capital and Greensill Capital.
Lara Warner, the group’s chief risk and compliance officer, and Brian Chin, head of the investment bank, are set to depart, according to people with knowledge of the moves.
The bank could make the announcements as early as Tuesday morning, as well as providing an update over its losses tied to the collapse of Archegos. Early estimates suggested Credit Suisse stands to lose up to $4bn from the collapse of its client, a family office run by former hedge fund manager Bill Hwang. The Swiss bank was one of several lenders that acted as prime broker to Hwang.
The Archegos losses follow the suspension last month of a series of supply-chain finance funds Credit Suisse offered to its clients that were run by Greensill Capital. Credit Suisse has calculated its clients could lose up to $3bn from those funds.
Both the Archegos and Greensill crises have raised questions over the risk management processes within the bank.
The Financial Times reported last month that Warner signed off a $140m bridging loan to Greensill after risk managers who raised concerns were overruled.
The prime brokerage division at the centre of the Archegos debacle sat within Chin’s investment bank. His departure was first reported by Bloomberg.
Both Warner and Chin were given enlarged briefs by chief executive Thomas Gottstein last summer as part of his first big overhaul of the group that were designed to reduce costs and increase efficiencies.
Warner, who had previously been chief risk officer, was also given responsibility for compliance. At the time of the restructuring, Gottstein said the shake-up would “provide resilience”.
The bank has lurched from one crisis to the next over the past few years. In the past year alone it has been caught up in alleged frauds at Chinese coffee house chain Luckin Coffee and German payments company Wirecard.
It revealed a potential $680m hit from crisis-era US mortgage-bond litigation and faces criminal charges from Switzerland’s federal prosecutor over dealings with Bulgarian mafiosi engaged in cocaine smuggling.
And at the start of the year, it was forced to write down $450m on its investment in hedge fund York Capital.
Warner joined Credit Suisse as an analyst from Lehman Brothers in 2002 and rose to become chief finance officer of the investment bank, before taking on group-level compliance and risk management roles.
The Australian was a close confidante of former chief executive Tidjane Thiam.
As part of last year’s restructure, Chin was made head of the investment bank, which combined Credit Suisse’s previous global markets, investment banking and capital markets, and Asia-Pacific markets business lines. Chin had previously been head of global markets.
Credit Suisse and Warner declined to comment. Chin did not respond to requests for comment.
