Meltdown: Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse

Money doesn’t get any dirtier or dumber than in this mordant history of Credit Suisse. Bloomberg News journalist Mavin (Pyramid of Lies) recaps a litany of scandals at the giant Swiss bank, stretching back to WWII, when the bank helped Nazi Germany turn looted art and gold into international bank deposits. Subsequent misdeeds included covert banking on behalf of rogue states like Libya and Iran, enabling wealthy American clients to evade taxes, selling “crap” mortgage-backed securities that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, and tailing and spying on its own discontented executive. But Credit Suisse’s 2023 collapse, Mavin contends, was due less to scandal than stupid investments—like into the shady asset management firm Archegos Capital, whose failure cost the bank $5.5 billion. Mavin paints the Credit Suisse culture as an ungainly mix of Swiss stolidity and American-style risk-taking—inherited from its 1988 merger with investment bank First Boston—overlaid with cut-throat office politics that kept upper management in turmoil. (The bank fired its co-CEO John Mack, who ran its Manhattan office, without warning after secretly setting up a duplicate Manhattan office that he knew nothing about.) The firm thus let its bankers undertake all manner of reckless and fraudulent dealings, then dithered unimaginatively during crises, “like a runaway train without a driver.” This lucid, tart, and entertaining account offers a window into the grubby chicanery and boneheaded bets that plague high finance. (Mar.)