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Former Bank of Ireland chief executive Francesca McDonagh is leaving her role at Credit Suisse in one of the biggest departures since UBS completed the takeover of its ailing rival in June.

McDonagh, who joined Credit Suisse as chief operations officer a year ago, missed out on a big role at UBS over the summer.

Her exit was announced on Monday morning in an internal memo seen by the Financial Times. People with knowledge of the situation added that she had agreed to join another unnamed company as chief executive in a role that will begin in January.

She was under early consideration for the chief executive job at NatWest after the departure of Alison Rose, the FT reported last month. NatWest last week announced it had appointed former Mastercard boss Rick Haythornthwaite as chair and he will lead the process of recruiting a CEO when he starts in January.

McDonagh was originally hired by Credit Suisse to run Europe, the Middle East and Africa but before starting was promoted to chief operations officer.

In that role, she was responsible for starting a wide-ranging cost-cutting programme at the bank. After UBS agreed to rescue Credit Suisse in March, she oversaw preparation for the integration of the banks in the run-up to the deal completing in June.

“I am very appreciative of her leadership, partnership, focus and the energy she brought to the executive board during a period of challenge and change,” wrote Credit Suisse chief executive Ulrich Körner in the staff memo on Monday.

Credit Suisse is being run as a separate subsidiary within UBS until the pair are legally combined next year, at which point Credit Suisse customers will transfer to UBS.

McDonagh had been chief executive of Bank of Ireland, the country’s biggest lender, for five years when she announced her surprise departure last year.

She had been a critic of Ireland’s cap on bank executive pay, which was introduced following the financial crisis, when the country’s two biggest banks — including BoI — were bailed out by the government.

Within hours of the deal completing in June, UBS announced five senior Credit Suisse executives would be leaving, including Dixit Joshi, chief financial officer, Markus Diethelm, general counsel, Edwin Low, head of the Asia-Pacific region, David Miller, co-head of the investment bank, and Ken Pang, co-head of markets.

UBS’s integration of Credit Suisse is expected to lead to thousands of job cuts, with 3,000 redundancies in Switzerland already announced.