An employee at Credit Suisse’s London office has said many staff are job hunting amid the “disaster” faced by workers due to the bank’s shock takeover by rival UBS.
Thousands of investment bankers working in the capital are expected to lose their jobs after UBS chairman Colm Kelleher said the bank intends to downsize that side of the business “and align it with our conservative risk culture”.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Swiss department of finance ordered Credit Suisse to temporarily suspend bonuses for all employees.
Earlier this week, the lender told staff it planned to complete bonus payments ahead of the takeover.
More than 5,000 staff work at Credit Suisse in London, including investment bankers who are one of the groups most likely to face layoffs.
Globally, up to a third of the 120,000 jobs at Credit Suisse could be lost, the Financial Times reported.
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But more than investment bankers are to be impacted, an employee told Sky News on condition of anonymity.
“I don’t expect people to have sympathy for the investment bankers,” they said, “but… I think people forget there aren’t investment bankers, there are back-office staff, there are all of those people who don’t sign up for any of this stuff”.
“It’s quite hard to emphasise how much of an employee disaster this is.”
The future for London office staff is unclear, the source said
“‘You will get paid this month’, that’s as a far as they’ve gone,” they added.
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Another source familiar with the situation said senior management have been “bending over backwards to keep colleagues as up to date as they possibly can, with an emphasis on continuing to get the job done while being very mindful of how this impacts people”.
While there was a pride in working for Switzerland’s second largest lender there is now a sense of sadness and anger towards management at the very top of the company, they said.
“This isn’t 2008, let’s be clear on that, but it is 2008 for Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse was very proud of itself, that they weren’t one of the state bailed-out European banks in 2008, and unfortunately there’s a real sense within the employees of the mismanagement of a few since that date, potentially arrogance, has cost 50,000 people their jobs.”
Credit Suisse had been listed as one of roughly 30 banks dubbed too big to fail. Given the collapse, the source spoke of anger towards senior bosses.
“I think that something has not gone right and there’s a lot of anger towards top management that the actions of a few over a period of time have cost a lot of people their job,” they said.
“When I started, it was a really top bank. It’s got huge heritage, it is a globally well-known bank, you were very proud to work there.
“Unfortunately, that pride in the last two years had started to diminish, you’ve seen a lot of people leave and people are voting with their feet.”
Now, in the London office at least, the source is planning their next move. “You’d be silly not to,” they said.
“It’s a tough market at the moment and there’s a limited supply, you don’t want to be the last one out and yeah, your days definitely feel numbered. Whether that’s true or not, time will tell.”