“The group will stay intact,” Thiam told Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick. “A takeover is not a subject,” Thiam said.

Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, (UBS is the largest) has been moving away from relatively capital-intensive areas such as investment banking, towards wealth management, particularly in relatively high-growth markets such as Asia.

Shares in the bank are down 51 per cent from the start of January (source: Bloomberg).

Credit Suisse has, like a number of its peers, been consolidating its booking centres to reduce costs and improve margins. Last year, for example, the bank and Wells Fargo announced an exclusive recruiting arrangement to provide relationship managers and their clients in Credit Suisse’s US domestic private banking business an opportunity to transition to Wells Fargo’s brokerage business, Wells Fargo Advisors, by early 2016.