After heading the presidency of Credit Suisse for nine months, Portuguese António Horta-Osório has resigned from his position for failing to comply with covid-19 prevention rules in Switzerland and the UK.

Horta-Osório, now ex-president of the bank, acknowledged and regretted that some of his attitudes caused difficulties for the bank as well as compromising his own ability to represent the bank internally and externally, reports lusa citing Bloomberg.

The public says that the exit was announced by the bank today, roughly one month after the first reports of possible non-compliance with health regulations in the UK and Switzerland.

Now the presidency of Credit Suisse has passed into the hands of Axel P. Lehmann, a member of the Zurich-based group's executive board.

Horta-Osório's defaults date back to July 2021 when he went to attend a Wimbledon tennis tournament in the United Kingdom, where he would be required to serve a ten-day quarantine upon arrival in the country.

The revelations were made public by the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, following an internal investigation by Credit Suisse itself.

In late November, Horta-Osório again broke the rules. On the 28th, upon arriving in Switzerland from a trip, he would have had to undergo a mandatory ten-day quarantine, decided because of the spread of the Omicron variant, but the then Chairman of Credit Suisse left the country as early as December 1 on a private jet bound for the Iberian Peninsula, Blick newspaper reported.

Before going to Credit Suisse, António Horta-Osório had led the British Lloyds Bank group since 2011, where he did the restructuring of the bank when the financial entity was under public control in the post-financial crisis and where he led the reprivatization process at a profit for the UK.

His good results on the bench and his career at the City earned him a decoration last year from Queen Elizabeth II, who awarded him the knighthood of the Order of the British Empire, with the right to the title "Sir".