Credit Suisse Chairman Antonio Horta-Osório, splashed by revelations surrounding quarantine rules he broke during a brief stay in Switzerland, has resigned from his post, the bank announced Monday night in Sunday, choosing Axel Lehmann to succeed him. The latter, who had joined the board of directors in early October after an extraordinary general meeting as chairman of the risk management committee, succeeds him with “immediate effect”, specifies the bank in a press release.
“I regret that some of my actions have caused difficulties for the bank and compromised my ability to represent it internally and externally,” Antonio Horta-Osorio said in a statement. “So I think my resignation is in the interest of the bank and its stakeholders at this very moment,” he added.
Board survey
The decision was taken after an internal investigation requested by the board, following revelations in December by the Swiss tabloid Blick that Antonio Horta-Osorio had broken the quarantine rules imposed on travelers from some countries after the appearance of the Omicron variant. This was the case during a visit to Switzerland in November, when he left the country when he had to respect 10 days of quarantine. According to Blick, Antonio Horta-Osorio had returned to Switzerland on board a private jet while Great Britain had been placed the day before on the list of countries to which these quarantines applied. After going “immediately to his home” on his arrival, he would have sought to know if he could “be released from quarantine” or if it “could at least be shortened”, says the newspaper, without revealing its sources.
Despite the “objections of inadmissibility of the cantonal and federal authorities”, he “takes the plane back to go to the Iberian Peninsula”, affirms the tabloid, then embarking for New York where a meeting of the board of directors is held on Thursday. .
Reuters had also reported in December that Antonio Horta-Osorio had attended the final of the Wimbledon tennis tournament in June when he should have respected a quarantine period. The bank had insisted that compliance with the rules was a “priority” for the group and its president. The Swiss government has since lifted those quarantines in favor of a stricter testing regime.
Rethinking corporate culture
The resignation comes less than a year after Antonio Horta-Osorio was tasked with rethinking the bank’s corporate culture, weakened by the Archegos and Greensill scandals. In early November, the bank’s new boss unveiled a long-awaited strategic plan, proposing to cut back on investment banking to put more emphasis on wealth management with the aim of putting risk management back at the heart of its corporate culture.