Mediocre and xenophobic: Tidjane Thiam takes a stand against Switzerland

Tidjane Thiam is back on the big stage: This week he published his biography in Paris. The most surprising thing about it is how sparse it is: a mere 224 pages. Yet he could have drawn on a wealth of material. As the youngest of seven siblings, he already had a turbulent childhood, mostly spent in exile in Morocco. Later, in his home country of Côte d'Ivoire, he survived a military coup as a minister.

As part of the global economic elite, he would also have had plenty of material for juicy anecdotes. Among his powerful friends is Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank.

Instead, the thin booklet with the subtitle "Overcoming Barriers, Building Bridges" reads like a dry application for his candidacy for president of Côte d'Ivoire. A court has blocked his eligibility for the elections, but Thiam is still fighting: Next week, the Constitutional Court will decide whether he can run. And in the event of another defeat, the 63-year-old already wants to prepare for the next elections.

Switzerland also played a formative role in Thiam's life – which he uses in his biography as an opportunity for a bitter reckoning. He complains about the racism and hostile views of the Zurich population. What he leaves out, however, is that his work in Switzerland could just as easily be characterized as a single major misunderstanding.

When Thiam took over as Credit Suisse's helm in 2015, he was initially hailed as a savior: On the day of the announcement, the stock price shot up by 8 percent. He had made a name for himself in London as the head of the insurer Prudential, and now he was tasked with getting the floundering Credit Suisse back on track.

Less than five years later, Thiam left Switzerland again – through the back door. The Spygate affair, the internal surveillance of former members of the bank's executive board, had damaged his reputation. However, his failure in such a short time can hardly be explained by xenophobia. Rather, he had no practical banking experience prior to his CEO position at Credit Suisse. Moreover, then-Chairman Urs Rohner had kept him in the dark about the bank's actual state. But he wasn't prepared for a job as a restructuring expert.

Finally, Thiam, who received an education at elite schools in Paris, never made a secret of how provincial Switzerland seemed to him. In his book, he writes accordingly: "If London was a global hub where people strove to stand out, Zurich was the exact opposite."

It remains to be hoped that Thiam will be spared such misunderstandings in the future in Côte d'Ivoire, where he lived only for a few years.