LONDON - Credit Suisse said Thursday it had swung to a profit in the fourth quarter of last year compared with a loss a year earlier, and announced that it would cut more costs than previously planned.
Switzerland’s second-biggest bank behind UBS said net income for the final three months of last year was 397 million Swiss francs, or $436 million, compared to a loss of 637 million francs in the same period a year earlier. Credit Suisse, based in Zurich, said it would further increase its cost-cutting target by 400 million francs to 4.4 billion francs by the end of 2015.
“Going into 2013, revenues have so far been consistent with the good starts we have seen to prior years,†chief executive Brady W. Dougan said in a statement. Profitability is “further benefiting from the strategic measures,†he said.
Rival UBS on Tuesday reported a loss of 1.9 billion francs for the fourth quarter due to costs to settle legal matters, including its role in a global rate-manipulation scandal. Boh Swiss banks have reacted recently to stricter capital rules introduced by Swiss regulators by revamping their investment banking operations.
While UBS’s shares jumped after it said in October it would cut 10,000 jobs to streamline the business, Credit Suisse investors were far less impressed with changes the bank announced in November.
Those changes, announced by Mr. Dougan, included appointing a new co-head of investment banking and merging the bank’s asset management division into its wealth management and private banking unit.
The new structure is meant to help Mr. Dougan fulfill his pledge to save billions of francs by 2015, and to make the division between wealth management and investment banking clearer.
Credit Suisse said on Thursday that 21 percent of its net revenues were generated from the collaboration among its different divisions. The bank also reduced its total compensation by 5 percent in 2012 from a year earlier.
Private banking and wealth managemen! t had a pretax profit of 911 million francs in the quarter, up from 532 million francs in the period in 2011.
Investment banking had a pretax profit of 298 million francs, a turnaround from a loss of 1.4 billion francs in the fourth quarter of 2011, as it made more money from debt sales and trading.
Credit Suisse said it proposes to pay a dividend of 10 centimes in cash and 65 centimes in shares for 2012.
