Gael de Boissard speaks at the OutLeadership conference in 2015Gaël de Boissard YouTube
Swiss hedge fund RBR Capital Advisors will announce this week a plan to split apart Credit Suisse, the Financial Times reported Monday.
The firm is proposing to split Credit Suisse into three parts: an investment bank modeled after First Boston, which Credit Suisse acquired in 1989, a wealth management group, and an asset manager.
It’s being spearheaded by Gaël de Boissard, who joined Credit Suisse in 2001, and eventually served as co-head of investment banking before leaving in December 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.
His plan is largely a rebuttal to disappointing performance under CEO Tidjane Thiam, who took over in 2015. In the almost two years since, the bank’s stock price has declined by 20%.
Swiss paper Finanz und Wirtschaft first reported the purchase of a stake by RBR Capital.
Activist investors have targeted high-profile companies like GE and ADP recently, but have largely avoided financial institutions, the FT reports.