When Paul Calello was promoted to run Credit Suisse’s investment bank last May, the joke among the bank’s critics was that it had appointed Paulo Coelho, philosopher and best-selling author of The Alchemist, by mistake.

Credit Suisse’s first-quarter results last week appeared to confirm the chief executive had engaged in some sort of reverse alchemy, with the investment banking business turning a Sfr2bn (€1.2bn) profit at the end of the first quarter of 2007 into a loss of Sfr2.1bn for the same period this year.