Credit Suisse, the Swiss investment bank, reported its first quarterly loss for nearly five years today, after asset writedowns reached $5.2 billion (£2.6 billion).

Switzerland's second-largest bank said that losses for the first quarter hit a worse-than-expected SwFr2.5 billion (£1.2 billion), compared with SwFr3.5 billion in the first three months of last year.

Brady Dougan, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, described the bank's results as "clearly unsatisfactory" but said that the group had substantially reduced its exposures to the damaged credit market.

Today's asset writedowns of $5.2 billion on leveraged finance and structured products adds to the $3.1 billion already announced for 2007.

Compared with its larger rival, UBS, which has announced $37.4 billion in asset writedowns, Credit Suisse's total $8.3 billion.

The bank said today that it had cut Its exposure to credit-related assets by 41 per cent since the end of last year, with SwFr20 billion exposure remaining to leveraged finance, SwFr3 billion to US mortgages and SwFr700 million to mortgage-backed collateralised debt obligations.

Mr Dougan said that he could not guarantee that there would not be further writedowns and refused to call the end of the credit crunch.

"A number of times people have seen a light at the end of the tunnel and it has been a train coming down the tracks," he said.

Credit Suisse had given warning in March that it was unlikely to post a first-quarter profit because of the continued fall in some markets.

"The forced selling by hedge funds created distressed market prices in certain asset classes, triggering substantial fair value reductions by banks," the bank said today.

A tough March came on top of SwFr2.8 billion in unexpected writedowns after a group of the bank's traders deliberately mispriced some assets.

Mr Dougan said: "Most of our businesses performed well, with revenues near, or in some cases above, those in the first quarter of 2007."

The private banking business, which includes wealth management and corporate and retail banking, reported an 8 per cent fall in pre-tax profit to SwFr1. billion, with a 13 per cent fall in pre-tax profit to SwFr860 million from wealth management slightly offset by a 3 per cent increase in pre-tax profit in corporate and retail banking to SwFr464 million.

Investment banking made a SwFr3.4 billion loss before tax, compared with a SwFr1.9 billion profit in the same quarter last year.

Credit Suisse attributed the fall mainly to continued problems in fixed income.

The asset management business made a SwFr468 million pre-tax loss, down from a SwFr257 million profit last year, because of SwFr566 million of writedowns on securities bought from the bank's money markt funds.

It was also hit by lower profits from its private equity investments.

Credit Suisse's wealthy customers, traditionally the bedrock of its operations, poured SwFr13.5 billion in net new assets into the wealth management operations, compared to SwFr15.2 billion at the same time last year.

Credit Suisse described client behaviour as more cautious but said that the amount of assets coming into the bank was healthy.

Despite announcing 500 job cuts in its investment bank on Tuesday, on top of 500 cuts in January and 170 last October, Credit Suisse said that its total headcount was up by 600 compared with the end of last year.

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