‘Credit Suisse to buy back stock, boost dividend’

Bloomberg

Credit Suisse Group AG will announce a share-buyback program worth “billions” and increase its dividend at an investor day this week, newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported, without saying where it got the information.
There’s pressure on Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam to follow in the footsteps of Sergio Ermotti, head of rival UBS Group AG, and use his own money to buy back shares, SonntagsZeitung said, citing unidentified sources. It also said the share buyback would be for just over 3 billion francs ($3 billion) in line with the company’s guidance. A Credit Suisse spokesman declined to comment when
contacted by Bloomberg.
The Swiss bank has said it wants to pay out 50 percent of earnings to shareholders in 2019 and 2020 assuming 9 billion to 10 billion francs in net income for these years. Credit Suisse paid out 0.25 francs per share for 2017.
Thiam, who has sought to focus on Credit Suisse being the go-to place for the super rich, is under pressure to
revive the share price.
It has dropped by about a third this year. Since taking over in 2015, Thiam has also shifted resources to emerging markets while paring back trading. He’s also tapped shareholders for billions of francs in fresh capital. At the bank’s investor day, he’ll outline plans for 2019 and beyond after concluding a three-year restructuring, with investors likely to question the bank on growth plans.
Thiam, a former insurance executive, has made cost cuts a major pillar of his strategy, focussing the restructuring on trading operations in New York and London, where he’s cut positions and reduced capital allocation to a markets division that today focusses on catering to the wealth-management units.