The incredible story of a once-venerable Swiss bank that produced a litany of financial scandals and whose collapse reveals the amorality at the heart of the global banking system.
Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world’s tax authorities. This is the story of a tawdry total meltdown of one of the biggest, most influential, and most scandal-ridden banks on the planet.
Duncan Mavin is uniquely sourced to tell the story of Credit Suisse’s scandal-ridden demise, with dozens of inside-the-room contacts that spill exclusive details about the bank onto these pages. The bank’s collapse, in March of last year, was the biggest shock to the financial system since the Financial Crisis of 2008, and sparked a media frenzy. But only Duncan has had access to key sources within the bank’s executive suite—including former CEOs—and the inner circle that brings this critical, rollicking story to life.
Meltdown will appeal to the global audience of readers fascinated by the corruption that permeates international finance and who wish to understand the role of money and those who shuffle it around the world in manipulating the world order in their own interests. It is an international tale that takes us from Mozambique to Australia, from Hong Kong to New York, and inside the hushed, marble corridors of Zurich’s banking elite.
"A top business reporter unravels the failure of Credit Suisse. When the once-mighty topple with a thundering crash, there are inevitably questions about how it happened. In the case of the fall of Credit Suisse, Mavin, a respected financial journalist, pulls together evidence from official documents, media reports, and personal interviews to piece together the story. A remarkable account of a complex story."
"A riveting autopsy of Credit Suisse's dramatic downfall, Mavin's Meltdown expertly dissects decades of scandal and hubris. This meticulously researched exposé reveals how one of banking's titans gradually, then suddenly, crumbled under the weight of its own misdeeds."
"Duncan Mavin’s engaging, authoritative indictment of Credit Suisse is a cavalcade of scandals, crises, and chronic management failures fueled by a pervasively rotten culture. Meltdown is a sensational page-turner, even if you sometimes feel like looking away in disgust from the illegality, amorality, depravity and greed that defined this pillar of global high finance for decades until its collapse.”
"Pulling no punches and naming names, Mavin lays out an almost comically scandalous story with dry humour, connecting the granular details of how it happened to the big picture - a decades-long saga of corporate folly. Swiss bank secrecy laws emerge as the villain, protecting over-rated, unaccountable executives from scrutiny of their actions until it was too late for anyone to save them from the consequences.”
