Tidjane Thiam is quitting as chief executive of Prudential to take the top post at banking group Credit Suisse.
The FTSE 100 insurer confirmed the end of Thiam’s five-year stint as chief executive of the group on Tuesday morning along with its annual results announcement.
Thiam is highly regarded in the City despite a sometimes-bumpy reign at Prudentialwith criticism from shareholders over a failed $35.5bn (£23.5bn) takeover bid for the Asian life assurance division of AIG in 2010 and personal censure from the City regulator over the collapsed deal.
However, his success in building the insurer’s position in Asian markets has tripled the company’s share price since he became chief executive in October 2009.
Describing Thiam as “one of the most exceptional leaders” in the Prudential’s history, chairman Paul Manduca said that while the board were sorry to see him go, they “understand his desire to take on a new challenge with another global leader in a different part of the financial services sector”.
Thiam will be replacing Brady Dougan, who became chief executive of Credit Suisse in 2007 and steered the bank through the financial crisis. However, Dougan’s position came under pressure last year when Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to charges that it helped American citizens evade taxes, becoming the first bank in more than a decade to admit to a crime in the US.
Credit Suisse also agreed to pay $2.6bn as part of the settlement, as Dougan blamed the scandal on a small number of Switzerland-based bankers who “skirted the bank’s controls”.
Dougan’s successor also faces challenges over the bank’s presence in investment banking – an area in which Swiss rival UBS has scaled back sharply – and a $10bn lawsuit over the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis.
Nonetheless, Thiam’s career before Prudential indicates that taking over a national institution such as Credit Suisse will not intimidate the chief executive.
In 1999, while serving as cabinet minister in Ivory Coast, where he was born, Thiam was put under house arrest during a military coup. “I had no job, no career, nothing at all … If you’ve been in a situation where you have nothing there’s nothing much you’re afraid of,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2012.
Thiam was mostly educated in France and graduated top of the class from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, a training ground for France’s political and business elite.
Once he graduated, Thiam followed a familiar path for corporate high-fliers, working at US management consultancy McKinsey and the World Bank before returning to Ivory Coast and joining the government in 1998. He then joined McKinsey again in Paris and was recruited by insurance group Aviva, where he came to the notice of Prudential as the head of Aviva’s European business.
As well as receiving the backing of the City, Thiam has been courted by politicians. He has served on the former prime minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa and has picked up a Légion d’Honneur, the equivalent of a knighthood, from the French government.
Mike Wells, the head of Prudential’s US operations, is widely expected to replace Thiam at the Pru. Manduca said on Tuesday that a successor had been identified and would be announced once the regulatory approval process has been completed.
