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摘要

Seven years on from the financial crisis, Europe's big investment banks have turned to new leaders to drive the next phase of their strategic overhauls. On December 1, Jes Staley took over as CEO of Barclays following the departure of Antony Jenkins earlier in the year. In July, Tidjane Thiam took the reins at Credit Suisse, and John Cryan became Deutsche Bank's new boss. The three face different challenges in navigating a slew of regulatory and industry obstacles. Staley, a onetime heir apparent to Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., aims to downsize Barclays' investment bank, including its core fixed-income operations, and increase the group's reliance on higher-margin retail and commercial banking under a strategy Barclays adopted 18 months ago. Thiam, former CEO of U.K. insurer Prudential, is cutting back Credit Suisse's investment bank while leading an expansion of its private banking and wealth management operations, especially in Asia. By contrast, Cryan has arguably the toughest job of the three because Deutsche has to stay the course in investment banking; the business is central to the bank's identity, and Deutsche lacks sufficient scale in retail and wealth management.