During weekend discussions involving teams that report to Dixit Joshi, the chief financial officer of Credit Suisse, the UBS deal was finalised to buy its troubled Swiss rival Credit Suisse for $3.25 billion.
The share price of Credit Suisse fell by more than 30% on Wednesday to a new record low of 1.55 Swiss francs on concerns of contagion following the failure of three US banks.
Ulrich Koerner, the chief executive officer of Credit Suisse, had appointed Joshi to be the bank’s chief financial officer in October 2022. David Mathers, who had served as CFO since 2010, was replaced by him.
The seasoned investment banker who is crucial to helping Credit Suisse get through its current difficulty has the following five characteristics:
- Joshi, who was born in Durban in 1971, attended the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa to get a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science and Statistics.
- In 1992, he began his three-decade career at the Standard Bank of South Africa. In 1995, the 51-year-old first began working at Credit Suisse. The bank’s official website states that he was involved in its activities in New York and London up to 2003.
- He then worked at Barclays Capital from 2003 until 2010 as the head of EMEA Equities and the chief of equity derivatives.
- Joshi was instrumental in the makeover of Deutsche Bank, which was in a comparable position to Credit Suisse at the time, from 2011 to 2022. He had positions in Asia Pacific stocks, listed derivatives and markets clearing, global prime finance, and leading institutional client group debt.
- Joshi also actively participates in a number of social causes. In addition to serving as a trustee for the Student Sponsorship Programme, which strives to make higher education accessible to underprivileged children in South Africa, he serves on the board of Pratham, a UK-based nonprofit organisation that aims to provide education in India. Joshi has also held a position on the board of the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
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