Co-CEO to Leave Credit Suisse Group

John J. Mack, co-chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group, will leave the company less than three years after being hired to drive Switzerland’s No. 2 bank to the top tier of securities firms, the company said Thursday.

The unexpected announcement suggested that the 59-year-old American had lost a power struggle with Oswald J. Grubel, his German-born co-CEO.

Mack fired about 33% of the workforce at the company’s investment bank unit, Credit Suisse First Boston, to cut compensation costs after his predecessor Allen Wheat’s $13.4-billion purchase of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette in 2001.

Mack, who quit as president of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in 2001 after losing a power struggle there, restored CSFB to profitability. But the bank slipped compared with its competitors in advising on mergers and underwriting stocks, two of investment banking’s most lucrative assignments. Like CSFB, Mack was based in New York.

“Mack’s an extremely talented executive, but as a co-CEO and a subordinate CEO, he wasn’t the real thing,” said Roy Smith, a professor of finance at New York University.

Mack’s duties as head of CSFB will be assumed by Brady W. Dougan, 44, whom Mack sent to London in March to oversee an effort to rebuild its European operations.