The toxic mess at Credit Suisse

Tidjane Thiam, chief executive officer of Credit Suisse © Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Image credit: © Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 10 September 2020

Swiss regulators announced last week that they were escalating an investigation into a corporate espionage scandal at Credit Suisse, says Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. Credit Suisse has already admitted hiring private detectives to track two former executives: Iqbal Khan, the former head of the bank’s wealth management division, and former head of human resources Peter Goerke. While Credit Suisse has tried to reassure investors that the scandal has not affected its business, it has already been forced to sack chief operating officer Pierre-Olivier Bouée, while CEO Tidjane Thiam (pictured) was forced to resign.

The scandal is unlikely to hurt the bank’s bottom line, since Swiss regulators don’t have the power to issue fines, say Harry Dempsey and Owen Walker in the Financial Times. But this is just the latest in a “series of revelations” about the group’s involvement in “risky business”, which also includes its exposure to the collapse of fraudulent German payments group Wirecard.

The spying scandal raises “wider questions” about governance and a “toxic culture” where the board seems to have “lost control”, says Lucy Burton in The Daily Telegraph. One person “who might have the answers” about how to move on from such problems is Richard Meddings, who was appointed to Credit Suisse’s board of director in April. Meddings has been involved with trying to deal with the fallout of scandals at Deutsche Bank, which was fined $7bn by US authorities, and TSB, which was involved with “one of the sector’s worst IT meltdowns in recent history