gofer:
Lukas Mühlemann is not just another w anker (sorry, ought to have typed "banker") but also one of that unique Swiss product called "professional board member". A rather fleeting glance across the Swiss corporate landscape will tell you that a strangely large number of boards (Verwaltungsräte) of public companies are made up of more or less the same people. In Switzerland, it's called "Filz" (= felt), in more enlightened parts of the world, it's referred to as incest.
It's the situation where the only qualification you need to get on the board of one company is a seat on another company's board. And how do you get that? You bootlick your way up the part-time army ladder, until one of your officer friends gets you into your first board seat.
Mühlemann is a particularly nasty fellow, for as Credit Suisse CEO he orchestrated the dismissal of an in-house analyst who, early this year, predicted SAir Group would post a CHF 0.5 billion loss. Obviously, Mühlemann either knew better (i.e. that the actual loss was to be far in excess of this figure) or knew nothing at all (i.e. had no idea of the financial position the company whose board he sat on was). The result was that he had this analyst fired and that Credit Suisse kept on issuing BUY recommendations of Swissair stock.
You can look at it either way: either Mühlemann is a con-man or a stupid foocker. Neither should have qualified him for a board seat on any public company, and Credit Suisse would be well advised to get rid of this a$$hole.
