Swiss spell end of name for CSFB

ONE of the best-established brands in investment banking, Credit Suisse First Boston, is to be ditched.

Parent Credit Suisse is to drop the CSFB name next year in the final step of the integration, announced last December, of its investment banking and asset management business with the larger retail and private banking business.

The group will trade under the single Credit Suisse brand after what the Swiss banking giant headed by Oswald Grübel described as 'extensive research with employees, clients and other stakeholders'.

The Credit Suisse First Boston name first appeared in 1978 when the Swiss bank and America's First Boston began a joint venture. By 1996, Credit Suisse had taken near full control of the investment bank, which now employs 6000 staff at its Canary Wharf offices.

First Boston traces its history back to the start of First National Bank of Boston in 1932. Few of Credit Suisse's top management are likely to lament the passing of the CSFB brand, which by the late 1990s had become synonymous with the worst excesses of bulge-bracket investment banks.

CSFB's London offices were home to the Flaming Ferraris, a group of traders that included James Archer, son of novelist and convicted perjurer Lord Archer.

In 2002, the Financial Services Authority fined CSFB a then-record £4m for trying to mislead the Japanese regulatory and tax authorities.