Credit Suisse investors demand chance to hold bosses to account over Greensill
Shareholders of Credit Suisse are piling pressure on the bank’s board to scrap plans for a vote that would absolve directors and executives for the Greensill scandal, after the firm failed to publish a full report into its failings.
Investors in the Swiss banking giant have raised concerns with the firm’s chair Axel Lehmann over the decision not to release a report into the bank’s involvement with collapsed lender Greensill last year, The FT first reported.
The board plans to reintroduce a customary ‘discharge’ vote to the agenda at its AGM this year, which under Swiss law allows shareholders to discharge bosses of their legal liabilities for the previous financial year.
But in recent weeks shareholders have been pushing the board to scrap the vote until they see the full investigation into the collapse.
“How can we let them off the hook when we don’t know the full details of what happened?” one shareholder told the FT.
The board scrapped the vote from last year’s agenda in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Greensill Capital and Archegos Capital, which both inflicted heavy financial damage on the firm.
Credit Suisse was forced to freeze $10bn of client funds last year in Greensill-backed supply-chain finance funds but has since paid back $6.7bn of the frozen funds.
In the wake of the collapse of Archegos Capital, the family office of investment magnate Bill Hwang last year, the bank published a full investigation into its failings. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hwang lost $20bn over the course of ten days.
Credit Suisse published an in depth review of its failings written by the law firm Paul Weiss, but decided to last month to keep the Greensill report under wraps. The report has been shared with the Swiss lender Finma.
Among the executives whose legal liabilities is yet to be discharged is Antonia Horta-Osorio who left the firm amid a conduct scandal, after an investigation found that he had breached covid rules on numerous occasions.