David Wildermuth is swapping a mid-level risk management job at Goldman Sachs for an executive board position at Credit Suisse.
It looks like a great personal trade, especially as much of the work of reforming Credit Suisse is likely to be done by the time Wildermuth takes up his new role in February.
The bank, under its new chairman António Horta-Osório, is racing to tackle its risk-management deficiencies as fast as possible, to revive its share price and stem a flow of experienced staff to rival firms.
So, Wildermuth may find that he inherits a much-improved risk-management function when he arrives at Credit Suisse after serving contractual gardening leave from his previous job.
Wildermuth is a highly experienced risk manager who spent 24 years at Goldman, becoming a partner in 2010 before being appointed deputy chief risk officer in 2015.
Most of his career has been in New York, except for a four-year stint in London that started in August 2008 just before the collapse of Lehman precipitated the global financial crisis.
Dodging losses
Goldman has a long track record of excellence in financial risk management, as demonstrated by the firm dodging losses when Archegos Capital collapsed in March.
It
