The decisions that made it
The Fall · Decision Forks
Credit Suisse Didn't Die in a Weekend. It Died of a Decade, and Was Buried Under an Unconstitutional Law.
The story is a single panic: a Saudi chairman says 'absolutely not,' a 167-year-old bank falls in 72 hours. But CS had already bled CHF 123 billion in 2022, and the emergency law used to wipe out CHF 16.5 billion of bondholders was later ruled unconstitutional.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Archegos and Greensill Didn't Break Credit Suisse. They Read Its Autopsy Out Loud.
In 2021 two clients blew holes in Credit Suisse weeks apart — a $5.5bn Archegos loss and four frozen funds holding ~$10bn. The bank survived. Then it died slowly anyway, two years later, of the disease the scandals had merely diagnosed.
8 min