Credit Suisse is planning a further push into China, where it has been “underweight”, as the bank’s chief executive shrugs aside fears over the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.
The drive is part of the Swiss bank’s renewed focus on Asia under the strategy of Tidjane Thiam, who took over last summer. Since then, he has been pruning its investment bank in favour of redeploying capital to its wealth management and private banking units.
“It’s fair to say we’ve got a good team but we’ve been underweight in China. It’s one place where we can grow,” Mr Thiam said on Tuesday at the bank’s annual Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. “I don’t understand the obsession with the [China] slowdown.”