elect auditors for one-year terms, approve the annual report and other financial statements, and have other powers granted by law. Shareholders elect members of the board of directors to serve a three-year term based on candidates nominated by the Chairman's and Governance Committee and the Board of Directors meet six times a year to vote on company resolutions. The Board sets Credit Suisse's business strategies and approves its compensation (remuneration) principles based on guidance from the compensation committee. It also has the authority to create committees that delegate specific management functions. Credit Suisse has two divisions, Private Banking & Wealth Management and Investment Banking. A Shared Services department provides support functions like risk management, legal, IT, and marketing to all areas. Operations are divided into four regions: Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, the Americas, and the Asian Pacific. Credit Suisse Private Banking has wealth management, corporate and institutional businesses. Credit Suisse Investment Banking handles securities, investment research, trading, prime brokerage, and capital procurement. Credit Suisse Asset Management sells investment classes, alternative investments, real-estate, equities, fixed income products, and other financial products. Ownership In August 2022, it was revealed that the first shareholder of Credit Suisse is in fact American, namely Harris Associates, holding over 10% of the shares of the group. Harris Associates itself is owned by French bank Natixis. As of January 25, 2023, Saudi National Bank an anchor investor holds 10 per cent stake, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) boosted its stake in the Credit Suisse Group to 6.87 per cent and Harris Associates reported a holding of below 3 per cent. History Early history Credit Suisse's founder, Alfred Escher, was called "the spiritual father of the railway law of 1852", for his work defeating the idea of a state-run railway system in Switzerland in favor of privatization. Escher founded Credit Suisse (originally called the Swiss Credit Institution, i.e., Schweizerische Kreditanstalt) jointly with Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt in 1856 primarily to provide domestic funding to railway projects, avoiding French banks that wanted to exert influence over the railway system. Escher aimed to start the company with three million shares and instead sold 218 million shares in three days. The bank was modeled after Crédit Mobilier, a bank funding railway projects in France that was founded two years prior, except Credit Suisse had a more conservative lending policy focused on short-to-medium term loans. In its first year of operation,