Credit Suisse: Credit crunch

Credit Suisse was never travelling terribly quickly towards its SFr8bn net profit target set for 2007. But investors should not jump off the bus just because it stalled in the fourth quarter. The Swiss bank’s revival is clearly fragile. The compensation-to-revenue ratio in its investment banking unit rose during the fourth quarter. So did the cost-to-income ratio. Sales and trading underperformed peers, equities in particular. And there were mounting cost pressures in Credit Suisse’s private ba...