Former Lloyds boss António Horta-Osório watched England’s defeat in the final of football’s European Championship at Wembley on the same day as he allegedly breached quarantine rules to watch the Wimbledon men’s tennis final, according to a person briefed on his movements.
Horta-Osório resigned as chair of the board of Credit Suisse last weekend after the bank investigated allegations that he had repeatedly broken Covid-19 rules. He had managed only nine months setting the strategy for the struggling Swiss bank, despite being brought in to steady it after a series of scandals and disastrous client failures.
He has publicly admitted breaching Swiss quarantine rules, apologising for what he described as an “unintentional” error. However, neither he nor Credit Suisse have commented on the allegations of rule-breaking in England.
Horta-Osório attended the Wimbledon tennis tournament on 10 and 11 July 2021, after flying from Switzerland to the UK. At that time Switzerland was on the UK government’s amber list of countries that required arrivals to isolate for 10 days to prevent coronavirus infections.
The banker entertained Credit Suisse clients at the men’s final, in which Novak Djokovic came from a set down to beat Matteo Berrettini, according to a person close to him.
The Euros culminated later on the same Sunday at Wembley stadium in London, with England losing to Italy 3-2 on penalties. Horta-Osório entertained a French Credit Suisse client and the client’s family, but also brought two of his children along, using Credit Suisse hospitality tickets that had not been taken up, a person close to him claimed. The Financial Times first reported his attendance at the game.
Banks – and particularly wealth managers – often host high-paying clients at sporting and cultural events as an incentive for them to keep their business there, although the practice has reduced since the financial crisis.
The investigation run by Credit Suisse also covered Horta-Osório’s use of the bank’s private jet. The chair and another senior Credit Suisse executive flew to Singapore for a week of meetings. On the return trip to Zurich the jet is claimed to have stopped to refuel in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, where Horta-Osório joined his family for a holiday.
The person close to Horta-Osório said an internal Credit Suisse audit had found that all his use of the corporate jet was within the bank’s policies.
He will only receive pay covering the nine months he worked at the bank, because of Swiss laws banning large “golden parachute” payouts for departing bosses. His pay for that period was worth 3.8m Swiss francs (£3m).
Horta-Osório was born and educated in Lisbon – where he gained a love of tennis – before embarking on a banking career that saw him move from his native Portugal to Brazil, Spain and then the UK, where he was appointed by George Osborne, then the chancellor, to run Britain’s biggest high street bank, Lloyds Banking Group. He received pay of more than £60m over his decade as head of Lloyds.
He is now a British citizen, and was knighted in June, shortly before the alleged UK quarantine breaches.
Credit Suisse declined to comment. A spokesperson for Horta-Osório declined to comment.
