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* New Credit Suisse CEO targets Asia, private banking growth
* Plans to raise $6.3 bln from share sales
* To shrink investment bank, cut costs
* Mood soured by weak third quarter results (Adds comments from CEO)
By Joshua Franklin
ZURICH, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse plans toraise 6 billion Swiss francs ($6.3 billion) from investors, slimdown its investment bank and cut jobs as new chief Tidjane Thiamembarks on the biggest overhaul of the Swiss bank in almost adecade.
Credit Suisse is emphasising wealth management and growingin Asia, echoing moves by rival UBS. It joins rivalsincluding Barclays and Deutsche Bank as wellas UBS in scaling back investment banking as tougher regulationssqueeze profitability.
Thiam, 53, hired from insurer Prudential, also saidhe will float shares in Credit Suisse's domestic Swiss bank andcut 2 billion francs in annual costs, giving his vision forSwitzerland's second-biggest bank almost four months into thejob.
He is raising cash to bolster the bank's capital position,which is one of the weakest in the sector. Thiam said thedecision had gone down well with regulators in a meeting.
"When I said I'll certainly recommend a capital raise Icould hear the sigh of relief. The temperature went up two orthree degrees in the room," Thiam told analysts.
Thiam, a former Ivory Coast government minister who replacedAmerican Brady Dougan, said weak quarterly results underscoredthe Zurich-based bank's need for change. Third-quarter pretaxincome fell 34 percent to 861 million francs after theinvestment bank fell to a 125 million franc loss from a 516million franc profit a year ago.
Analysts welcomed most aspects of Thiam's plans, but saidsentiment was soured by the weak results.
"We see today's announcement to shrink the investment bank,attack the cost base in earnest and simplify group structurewill, over time, drive value creation," said Huw van Steenis atMorgan Stanley. "But a weak Q3 in FICC (fixed income, currenciesand commodities) and heavier costs will clearly drag beforeCredit Suisse puts flesh on the skeletal new plan."
Credit Suisse shares fell as much as 5.2 percent and by 1510GMT were down 3.6 percent. The stock has dropped 3 percent thisyear against a rise of more than 11 percent for UBS.
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Thiam said Credit Suisse would put more focus on managingthe fortunes of the world's wealthy, especially in emergingmarkets.
Credit Suisse is the world's fourth biggest private bank andthe third biggest in Asia. Thiam, who spearheaded strong growthin Asia in his previous job at Prudential, said he wants to morethan double income from Asia to 2.1 billion francs by 2018.
He also aims to increase the bank's international wealthmanagement income by 62 percent to 2.1 billion by 2018, and growincome in Switzerland by 44 percent to 2.3 billion.
He plans to cut gross costs by 3.5 billion francs by end-2018 and will invest 1.5 billion francs in growth initiatives,to reduce the cost base to between 18.5 billion and 19 billion.
"The new strategy of focusing on the Swiss market and wealthmanagement is attractive," said Helmut Hipper, a fund managerwith Credit Suisse shareholder Union Investment.
"To shrink the investment bank should create value. The goalof strengthening its Asian footprint is a good idea, but then, how can you do this without acquisitions and how would you payfor those?" he added.
The bank will reduce the number of its staff in Switzerlandby a net 1,600 over the next three years, and will cut thenumber of its investment bank staff in London. Thiam estimated1,800 of its London-based staff did not need to be in such acostly location.
It aims to raise 1.35 billion francs from selling shares toa number of investors at 5.5 percent below their price onTuesday, and to raise a further 4.7 billion via a rights issueto existing investors.
Thiam said the bank's common equity capital adequacy ratioshould rise to 12.2 percent of risk-adjusted assets, and thebank aims to keep that ratio above 12 percent.
By comparison, UBS is one of the strongest capitalised banksin the world, with a common equity ratio of 14.4 percent at theend of June. The average for Europe's 24 biggest banks was 13.2percent, lifted by high levels at Nordic lenders.
Thiam also aims to streamline the bank by creating threegeographic divisions: a Swiss universal bank, Asia Pacific, andInternational wealth management; and two investment bank units:global markets, and investment banking and capital markets.
Thiam intends to lower capital used by the investment bank,mainly in its "macro" businesses, which includes foreignexchange and rates trading products, and where the bank plans toreduce risk-weighted assets by 72 percent by year end.
He said Credit Suisse needed to maintain an investment bankto provide products for the rich individuals his private bank istargeting.
"This is why they come to us," Thiam said. "If you don'thave that all you have is people taking them out to lunch.That's not a business model, long-term." ($1 = 0.9554 Swiss francs)
(Additional reporting Oliver Hirt and Arno Schuetze; Writing bySteve Slater; Editing by David Holmes and Keith Weir)
