Credit Suisse sets up centre of excellence in country

To ramp up its India headcount from 2,600 to 4,000

After Barclays, City Bank and Deutsche Bank, Swiss banking group Credit Suisse has announced setting up of its centre of excellence (CoE) in Pune. The first such centre in India.

The centre will employee more than 2,600 staff providing financial accounting, technology and investment banking operations support to the bank in more than 50 countries around the globe.

"This is our third centre of excellence globally after Poland and North Carolina in the US. We are planning to expand our India operations by end of 2017 and increase the headcount from current 2,600 to 4,000 people. Pune is emerging as a hub for financial services sector and the CoE demonstrates our focus on investing in and growing our franchise and footprint in India, " said Mihir Doshi, managing director and country head, Credit Suisse.

Doshi, however, declined to share any investments details made in the CoE.

Speaking about bank's banking operations in India, he said, "Merger and acquisition (M&A) operations in India is growing in positive manner. This was a marquee year for us and major M&A deals were closed by us. We have started hiring in wealth management and hired couple of banks and in the process of hiring two more. We have done four M&A deals in the past and the business is growing."

According to media reports, Credit Suisse is planning to cut nearly 2,000 jobs at its London office and is looking at India as one of the regions to base some of the jobs cut in London.

Credit Suisse is active in wealth management, investment banking and asset management in India, serving high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, corporates and institutional clients.