Credit Suisse has a knack of publishing a complicated array of figures that makes it hard to assess them quickly. Next year may finally bring about an improvement – like in Asia.

Credit Suisse last week boasted a pretax profit of 856 million Swiss francs ($851 million), a proud figure that the management hoped experts would focus on.

How much the bank actually earned in the three months through September it put a few lines lower down the statement: pretax actually had amounted to 671 million.

Litigation and Restructuring

The delta is made up by costs for litigation and restructuring costs that the bank had worked so hard to implement since CEO Tidjane Thiam took over in 2015.

Credit Suisse believes that adjusted figures are a better measurement of its operative performance, as CFO David Mathers has reiterated quarter after quarter.

Core and Non-Core

Apart from the adjusted figures, Credit Suisse also publishes figures for the core business, something it has done ever since the times of Brady Dougan. The core business includes divisions that the bank wants to retain.

In all, the bank in the past has managed to come up with four different figures for each of the group’s results. In the ideal world – bad bank wound up, legal and restructuring costs down to zero – pretax would have amounted to 1.12 billion francs. In reality, shareholders had to contend themselves with 40 percent less.

Things Will Get Better

Credit Suisse aims to ease the situation. After the conclusion of Thiam's strategic reorganization, the bank starting next year sees no more need to remove the restructuring costs from the set of headline numbers. Real and adjusted numbers will be closer sync than they used to, Mathers told the «Wall Street Journal» last week.

A certan visibility is already given in Asia-Pacific (APAC) where the division operates more or less on its own. This offers a quite realistic picture.  

How Well the Bank Did

Thiam’s profitability targets were based on real numbers and hence the focus will have to be put on those, he added. With this number, the return on equity, analysts in future will find it easier to see how well the bank did.