Mike Wells (businessman) 20 years in a variety of senior positions at Jackson. He was appointed as Jackson's CEO in January 2011, at which time he also joined the board of Prudential, Jackson's UK-based parent company. During Wells's four-year tenure as CEO of Jackson, it became the largest seller of variable annuities in the US. In June 2015, Wells succeeded Tidjane Thiam (who left to become CEO of Credit Suisse), on a pay package worth up to £7.5 million. In March 2016, he announced Prudential's first full-year results since taking over as CEO, showing that the group made operating profits of £4billion in
Tidjane Thiam reduced after shareholder backlash. From 2015 to 2018, Credit Suisse did not turn an annualized profit under Thiam. In light of this fact, he has repeatedly asked for his bonuses and overall compensation to be reduced. In March 2018, Thiam detailed a new profitability track for the company by stating: "We've been cleaning up a lot of undesirable trades that we should not have done... There's no way to clean up the past, given the legacy we have, without generating losses. We have profitable operations of the company." In October 1999 Thiam was appointed by James Wolfensohn as one of