Bellwether: n. From the practice of placing a bell around the
neck of a castrated ram so that it might lead its flockBellwether
18 International Financing Review September 8 2018Who’s moving where...
n PIMCO has hired
John Studzinski as vice
chairman, a new role,
charged with
expanding the fixed
income investment
firm’s global strategy.
He will be based in
New York and report to
Pimco CEO Emmanuel
Roman. Studzinski
joined Pimco from the
Blackstone Group,where he was most
recently vice-chairman
for investor relations
and business
development.
Previously, he was
head of European
investment banking at
Morgan Stanley, and
was then co-head of
investment banking at
HSBC.n JP MORGAN has
hired Nick Skaff and
Ismail Iraqi for its
equity capital markets
emerging markets
desk in London. Both
joined from Deutsche
Bank. Skaff was most
recently a managing
director on Deutsche’s
ECM team, in charge
of origination and
execution oftransactions in EMEA
emerging markets. He
started as a graduate
analyst in 2003 and
held several positions
in ECM and leverage
DCM teams. Iraqi was
a vice president in
Deutsche’s ECM team.n Daan Knottenbelt
has been appointed by
private equity firm
KKR to lead its
financial services team
across EMEA. He will
also be in charge of
activity across all
sectors in the Benelux
region. He joined from
Palamon Capital
Partners, where he has
spent 18 years.n Samuel Sule has
joined the debt capital
markets team at
RENAISSANCE
CAPITAL. Sule had spent
five years at Standard
Chartered working on
debt transactions, from
origination to structuring
and distribution, for
issuers across West
Africa. He will be based in
London.THE AWARD FOR the most perfectly executed humble brag
of the week goes to Tidjane Thiam, after Credit Suisse
issued a statement on behalf of its CEO saying that,
contrary to press speculation, Thiam would not after
all be running as a presidential candidate for the Ivory
Coast.
Rather than leaving it at that, Thiam used the
opportunity to give a brief update on his achievements
at Credit Suisse, then a longer narrative about his
contribution to Africa’s economy, including his
contribution “to the construction of roads, primary
schools, high schools, hospitals, wells, and power plants
throughout the Ivory Coast, as well as to the Third Bridge
of Abidjan – one of the largest in Africa”.
Although he stopped short of saying he was the best
manager in the world, it nevertheless read like the
transcript of a Jose Mourinho press conference; or the
perfect pitch of someone looking to get into politics,
rather than an attempt by the CEO of a bank to convey
quite the opposite.
Credit Suisse said the statement was made in response
to what it called speculation in the media “and on the
internet” – an interesting distinction that makes you
wonder whether it should update its cuttings service.
Intrigued – and having scanned a number of old-
fashioned newspapers – Bellwether resorted to the
“internet” but could find nothing at all, certainly nothing
that could be classed as so potentially market-moving
that it would warrant such an in-depth statement. Still,
it’s good to know Thiam’s CV is now fully updated
should he have a change of heart.IT’S BEEN QUITE the week for Credit Suisse and well-
orchestrated announcements. The bank also unveiled the
promotion of Antonia Rowan to head of its UK advisory
team after Lewis Burnett’s abrupt departure to BNP Paribas
after just five months in the job.
While BNPP announced it had hired Burnett last month,
Credit Suisse was slower on the uptake, saying in a memo
only last week that Burnett had decided to pursue other
opportunities. Maybe it thought he’d been on holiday.LAST WEEK, TSB chairman Richard
Meddings wrote to Nicky Morgan,
the chair of the Treasury Select
Committee, announcing the
departure of TSB CEO Paul Pester
following the bank’s IT snafu. The
missive was appropriately shambolic.
For starters, the letter was dated
a year into the future, and then
it began “Dear Morgan” – a little
disrespectful, even when talking to a
politician.
Explaining that Pester was stepping
down, Meddings said he had been
CEO for seven years and had made “an outstanding
contribution since 2013”. Was this an error too, or was he
damning his former CEO with faint praise?
Meddings stepped down from his previous job as CFO
of Standard Chartered after regulators stripped him of
his risk responsibilities in case of a potential conflict of
interest. When he was asked at the time about his next
career move, he quipped that he might become a financial
journalist. With typos like the ones in this letter, he’d fit in
perfectly at IFR. nIt’s good to
know Thiam’s
CV is now
fully updated
should he
have a change
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