The three were an influential, much-noticed team for Switzerland's second-largest bank. They are still top executives, just not at Credit Suisse.
Anke Bridge Haux (pictured below) is now also on her way. As finews.com reported Wednesday, she will become CEO of LGT Bank (Schweiz) in November (German only). After a good twelve years, the 45-year-old is turning her back on Credit Suisse to head the domestic entity for the principality's largest bank.
She remains a member of senior management until she leaves although the buzz around her has ebbed noticeably since she was responsible for leading the bank's digital business.
Another Loss
(Image: LGT)
Bridge-Haux's departure marks another senior leader leaving the troubled, crisis-prone bank. She is also the last member of a trio of influentials who set the pace in the domestic market under then head of the Swiss business Thomas Gottstein.
The full trio comprised Bridge-Haux, Dagmar Kamber Borens (image below) and Florence Schnydrig Moser.
2023 Promotion
The important thing to note is none of them seem to be taking a step back. Kamber Borens, 51, is the Swiss head of State Street, the world's largest custodian. She was given additional responsibilities earlier this year for the German custodian business and overall management of investor services in the Netherlands, Austria, and the Nordic countries. Schnydrig Moser heads Private Banking for Zurich Cantonalbank, one of the country's five largest banks.
That means the former trio is now well-ensconced throughout the financial hub and three promising female careers at Credit Suisse are now history.
The First to Go
(Image: PD )
Kamber Borens was the first to depart. In 2018, she left Credit Suisse's Swiss business after a long career at UBS, including a stint in Asia. She ostensibly left after management restructuring reduced the COO's operational remit to that of IT and operations.
That was also when Bridge Haux was appointed head of digital the Swiss business of Credit Suisse. There was a certain irony in that given Kamber Borens had in 2016 given the youthful banker responsibility for Swiss digitalization plans and agenda. According to a number of sources, both of them worked closely with each other and got along well, together with the third member of the trio, product head Florence Schnydrig Moser.
Moser launched a digital piggy bank, the Digipigi, which raised a media furor at the time. Since then, however, it has failed to become widely adopted.
Quintet Departure
Schnydrig Moser (pictured below) left Credit Suisse in the summer of 2018 to become the head of the bank's credit card subsidiary Swisscard AECS. Effectively, that was the end of the trio.
Despite that, their careers continued to take off. In August 2019 Kamber Borens became CEO of Quintet Switzerland, a new bank project led by former UBS manager Juerg Zeltner, who Kamber Borens knew from her tenure at the country's largest bank. Zeltner was given the task by the owners of Luxembourg's KBL to turn what was a banking conglomerate into a boutique private bank. Zeltner, however, died suddenly in March 2020, and she abruptly left the project shortly after.
(Image: ZKB)
Big Bank Methods
Quintet never really took off. At the end of 2021, a Ticino competitor PKB took over its clients after it shut its Swiss arm. But Kamber Borens was already the country head of State Street by that time.
At the start of 2021, Schnydrig Moser took up her position at the cantonal bank. She is part of a new generation of bank managers under head Urs Baumann, who succeeded his long-tenured predecessor Martin Scholl in the fall of 2022. As an educated mathematician, she brought big bank methods from her time at UBS and Credit Suisse, particularly when it came to having clients managed by teams as opposed to individual advisors. She also took steps to centralize management and helped promote the careers of other women, including the appointment of Judith Albrecht as head of the Lake Zurich region for private banking.
Own Agenda
«We often forget that the more we advance in our careers, the more authority we win over our schedules», the 51-year-old Schnydrig Moser once said in an interview with finews.com.
Schnydrig Moser has not only managed to do exactly that but the other two members of the trio at Credit Suisse have as well. She has continued to climb the operative ranks instead of easing back and sitting on the boards of various companies. If you look at the careers of all three together, it is clear that the Swiss banking hub will be hearing more from them. Just not at Credit Suisse.
