LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Not since the 2008 financial crisis has a bank chairman inherited as big a mess as António Horta-Osório at Credit Suisse. The outgoing Lloyds Banking Group chief executive, who joins the Zurich-based lender in May, could rescue some value with radical surgery. Horta-Osório is already in contact with Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein over the twin crises engulfing Credit Suisse. First is Archegos Capital Management, a hedge fund that defaulted on margin calls last week. Credit Suisse may also take losses on loans in funds linked to collapsed financier Greensill Capital. Though the size of the double hit is unclear, investors wiped 23% off Credit Suisse’s shares in March – equivalent to 7.2 billion Swiss francs ($7.9 billion) of losses. That scale of a blow could push the bank’s common equity Tier 1 capital ratio as low as 10.7% according to a Breakingviews calculation, below its 12.5% target. It might need to suspend dividends and buybacks or even raise capital. The crisis should, however, trigger long-overdue reforms. Credit Suisse’s collection of businesses, many of which have scant relevance to the private banking core, trade at a huge discount to the sum of their parts. Even assuming the investment bank has no value, the remaining private bank, Swiss unit, asset management and Asia divisions could between them be worth 35 billion Swiss francs – 41% above the current market capitalisation. That’s according to a Breakingviews calculation using 2022 consensus estimates and rivals’ price-earnings multiples. Reining in the traders is the first step. Even before the Archegos crisis, the investment bank only made an average return on capital of 9% over the last three years. Exiting the business completely would be difficult, so Horta-Osório’s best bet is to shrink it massively. That means cutting exposure to prime broking and debt trading, which mesh poorly with the core private bank. Horta-Osório’s next step should be to revive a much-touted listing of the domestic Swiss business. That could be worth 15 billion Swiss francs on the average 9.7 times 2022 earnings multiple for European banks. Lastly, the asset management unit remains sub-scale. Selling that to peers like UBS or Deutsche Bank would raise 3 billion Swiss francs. Those moves would reduce the discount at which Credit Suisse trades, and leave a leaner company focused on private banking, with exposure to fast-growing Asia. Successive executives and chairmen claimed Credit Suisse was exactly that. Horta-Osório has a chance to make it finally true.