C.Suisse clients want bonus repayment on AGM agenda

ZURICH Feb 3 (Reuters) - A group of Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) clients want management at Switzerland's second-largest bank to repay their bonuses to compensate savers who lost money invested in papers of bankrupt U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

"Only about 5 percent of (our) members have been compensated for Lehman papers that became worthless," said Gabriela Fischer, a spokeswoman for the saver group, in a statement.

The group, which hopes to force the issue onto the bank's forthcoming AGM agenda, said Chief Executive Brady Dougan and a number of other high-ranking managers should pay back bonuses from 2004 to 2008 and that this should be used to compensate savers.

But a Credit Suisse spokesman said the bank had already made provisions for affected clients: "We put 100 million Swiss francs ($86.13 million) aside to compensate 2,000 customers. The vast majority of them have accepted."

Credit Suisse and bigger Swiss rival UBS (UBSN.VX)(UBS.N) have come under increasing pressure over executive pay from savers disgruntled at billions in writedowns that forced UBS to turn to the Swiss government for help and prompted Credit Suisse to raise fresh capital.

Both banks have said they will cut bonuses for 2008 and in December Credit Suisse said it would pay senior executive bonuses with illiquid assets, forcing employees to take on the risk that at least some of them put on the Swiss bank's books.

UBS was forced to agree to an advisory vote by shareholders on management pay, and pressure from savers and shareholders also prompted some former managers to give back part of their bonuses.

Billions of dollars of investors' money went up in smoke worldwide when Lehman Brothers collapsed in September and lenders in Europe and in the United States are facing angry clients who said they got no early warning from their bank.

Swiss law requires banks to clearly explain to retail clients what level of risk they face when they buy financial products.

Credit Suisse, which operates globally both in investment banking and wealth management, has said it will repay those private clients who, at the end of August, had up to 500,000 Swiss francs at Credit Suisse and had invested more than half of this in Lehman products.

But the bank also said investors were solely responsible for the issuer risk of such structured products. ($1=1.161 Swiss Franc) (Reporting by Jason Rhodes and Albert Schmieder; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)