Tidjane Thiam Tidjane Thiam Tidjane Thiam (; born 29 July 1962) is a French-Ivorian banker and philanthropist who has served as the chief executive officer of Swiss bank Credit Suisse since March 2015. Previous to assuming the post, Thiam was the chief financial officer of British banking group Prudential from 2007 to 2009 before serving as its chief executive until 2013. Born into a prominent political family in the Ivory Coast, he holds dual Ivorian and French citizenship. He studied advanced mathematics and physics in France before joining the management consultants McKinsey & Company in 1986, where he worked until 1994. From
Tidjane Thiam first Ivorian President, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, died and was replaced by Henri Konan Bédié. In April 1994, at the request of the new President, Thiam left France and McKinsey to go back to Abidjan and become the CEO of the National Bureau for Technical Studies and Development (BNETD), an infrastructure development and economic advisory body with more than 4,000 staff, reporting directly to the President and the Prime Minister. In that role, which had cabinet rank, he was also handling key negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Thiam was also a key member of the Privatization Committee,