Credit Suisse says market environment still 'very challenging'

Switzerland's second biggest bank Credit Suisse said Thursday that it was adopting a cautious outlook for the coming quarter, even as it wrote down 2.4 billion Swiss francs in assets in the third quarter.

"We expect the market environment to remain very challenging and we are cautious with regard to the outlook for the fourth quarter," Brady Dougan, the group's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The third quarter writedowns worth an equivalent 2.06 billion dollars or 1.61 billion euros add to the 10 billion francs worth already written down since the beginning of the subprime crisis.

The bank had last week pre-announced a 1.261 billion franc loss for the third quarter, a figure which it confirmed Thursday.

In its full earnings statement for the third quarter, the bank said its private banking unit attracted 14.5 billion francs worth of net new assets during the three months.

However, its asset management unit saw outflows of 16.5 billion francs, as clients withdrew assets.