ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse's (S:CSGN) largest shareholder wants the bank's management to consider parts of the break-up plan proposed by an activist investor, including shifting the group's investment banking unit to the United States from Switzerland, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
However, Harris Associates said it did not support the overall direction of the activist plan put forward by RBR Capital Advisors, according to the paper.
Harris Associates owns 5.03 per cent of Credit Suisse , according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data.
But David Herro, Harris's international chief investment officer, said some points in RBR's plan "require a second thought," FT reported.
Swiss hedge fund RBR is seeking to rally support for a campaign to break up Credit Suisse, hoping to capitalize on unrest after Switzerland's second-biggest bank lost about a quarter of its value since 2015.
It wants to divide Credit Suisse into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating the Zurich-based bank's retail and corporate banking operations.
"I don't really think there's a lot of merit (in the break-up plan)," Herro was quoted in the FT article that was published online. "We would just prefer to see management execute the plan that they've developed."
But the plan should not be automatically dismissed by Credit Suisse's management, the report quoted Herro as saying.
Credit Suisse was not immediately available for comment.