CREDIT SUISSE TRIES TO STOP EXECS FROM LEAVING SCANDAL-RIDDEN BANK

Credit Suisse Group AG is grappling with how to keep top bankers from fleeing to competitors and drastically reducing risk as new Chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio seeks to recover from a series of scandals, Melissa Karsh, Giles Turner, and Marion Halftermeyer reported for Bloomberg News.

The lender is cutting ties with SoftBank Group Corp., a backer to Lex Greensill’s collapsed supply-chain finance empire, and is temporarily barring clients from withdrawing all of their cash from a fund that invests with Renaissance Technologies after the strategy tanked and investors rushed for the exit.

It’s also considering retention bonuses for top performers to stabilize the business as defections mount in the wake of the Greensill debacle and the implosion of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, which contributed to a first-quarter pretax loss of 900 million francs ($1 billion.)

“They’re looking a bit like a basket case right now,” Octavio Marenzi, chief executive officer of capital markets consulting firm Opimas, said Friday in a phone interview.

“The Archegos thing is really bad, and what happens after an event like that is people start to pick on them. They’re seen as the weakest kid in the class.”

Some of the firm’s senior talent is streaming for the exits. Its top financial services banker, Alejandro Przygoda, is leaving for Jefferies Financial Group Inc., along with at least three colleagues, people familiar with the matter have said.

That followed the recent departures of at least four other members of the financial institutions group to competitors including Barclays Plc., Bank of America Corp., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Shares of Zurich-based Credit Suisse have tumbled about 14% this year, the only decline among 35 companies in the Bloomberg Europe 500 Banks & Financial Services Index, which has surged 26%.

Credit Suisse will no longer do any new business with SoftBank, people with knowledge of situation said, a decision that may ripple across the firm’s investment bank. SoftBank has been a prolific dealmaker, and last year Credit Suisse and other banks held about $8 billion of SoftBank shares in collateral, pledged by founder Masayoshi Son.

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