YouSaid · the spoken record

Duncan Mavin

lines on the record: 43
first: 2025-01-17
most recent: 2025-01-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, it is that thing about culture and behavior. I think what tends to happen in banking, and it's happening right now, right? So you have this bank collapses, you had some banks collapse in the US, and the debate quickly goes to the things that regulators always do. So they talk about capital ratios and liquidity coverage ratios. That wasn't what killed Credit Suisse. What killed Credit Suisse was terrible conduct over decades by its employees that meant that the bank had no reputation, that there was a sense that it could get away with whatever it wanted, the result of which was one executive after another gets fired for sometimes things to do with banking. Sometimes not we didn't even talk about the spying stuff or the COVID breaches that top executives go for. The point really for me is that conduct really matters, behavior really matters. In the end, you have to deal with it, otherwise it will destroy.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've got the back of all the banks here. That was their attempt to kind of stop people panicking. And the Swiss did their version of that. There's definitely a debate in Switzerland. There are some people who say only our finance minister had stood up and said, we've got credit suises back, we could have avoided this. I just don't really buy that. I think, you know, that would have been an extraordinary thing for her to say for the finance minister to say, given everything that had happened, why should she have the back of this bank that repeatedly is embarrassing the entire nation? So it's just sort of implausible. And in fact, the solution they come up with in the end is basically to try and nip the whole thing in the bud before it gets out of control.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I mean, the Swiss authorities were getting really frustrated with the executives at Credit Suisse at that point. They felt like they really had their heads in the sand, you know, kind of acting as though, yeah, we've got a bit of a problem, but we'll turn it around. If everyone just gets behind our plan, it'll all be okay. Meanwhile, the Swiss authorities will kind of go, no, you're collapsing and you could take the entire Swiss economy with you. And that could lead to another financial crisis. And you're right, the context for this is kind of sometimes these things, these moments come and go, but the context for it is like a couple of banks have collapsed in the US at that point and there were worries in the US about a larger banking crisis that could be an echo of the financial crisis. I think genuinely people were worried in Switzerland, in London, in New York and Washington, you know, that things could get out of control. We'd seen Janet Yallen and Joe Biden step up and say,”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it ends with a deal for Chris Suisse to be taken over by its great rival UBS and the ultimate humiliation to be forced for a fairly meagre sum, a few billion dollars into the hands of its rival UBS, which is UBS gets an incredible deal. There's been this talk, as you said, for years and years and years of been talk about merging these two banks. It's always been too complicated, too many egos. It's going to be too expensive. And here they suddenly get it for a song, really. And that's the end of Crow Suisse, the history of this bank finished in sort of a matter of a few hours.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it does feel really inevitable. And I think what really happens is talked about this sort of customers losing trust in their investment banking clients losing trust. But I think what really happens in the end is that the Swiss finance minister, a woman named Karen Keller Souter, who takes over, she's also new in her job, right? So she takes over the January and she, I think, looks around and says, do I trust these guys to fix this bank? And I think, you know, understandably says, well, they're all new. The banks are mess. It's one scandal after another. I don't really trust it. So then it's finished, right? Like you can't continue if you don't have the backing of the Swiss authorities. It's kind of over at that point.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. It's tough to see a way out in the last few months. One of the things that I think is really important is because of the scandals, they've kind of churned through executives, they've changed a CEO, they change a chairman. Right at the end, they got a new CEO, new chairman, a new CFO, a new chief risk officer. They've got a new head of communications, a new chief legal counsel. Everybody's new. Everybody's been there just a few months, really. And so they're”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our banks work, which is that they take in our money and they lend most of it out. And what's in the bank at any given time is only a small proportion of the entire money that they actually owe back to their customers. If we all ask for it back, the bank's finished. That's the truth. And we kind of don't like to talk about it because we're the uncomfortable. But it's the truth. And so what Credit Suisse revealed is that even in a massive, massive bank like this, that can happen really quickly now because of technology.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's a really important new development, right? That even in the financial crisis, if you remember the financial crisis, which seems not that long ago, but we still had images of people lining up in the street, like actually real humans in the street outside Northern Rock in the UK or other banks around the world to get their money out. Well, nobody really needs to do that anymore, right? You just get on your phone and move it somewhere else, even if you got a lot of money in the bank, you can do that. And maybe if you've got a lot of money, maybe it's even easier to do that. But I think, yeah, that is a real worry, right? And it sort of led to some real soul searching, I think, among regulators. Like, how do we deal with this? If a tweet can lead to this and if people can move their money so quickly and so easily, so seamlessly, then we have a bit of a problem. Because it sort of gets at what's like a fundamental that we don't really like to talk about in the way.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, in the end, what kills them really is a tweet, right? I mean, bizarre, right? It's like this massive bank with tens of thousands of employees. It's been around 167 years. And a guy in Australia tweets something that journalists in Australia tweets a fairly innocuous tweet that doesn't even mention them, but says, I think a global investment bank might be in trouble, essentially. And people say, well, it's got to be Credit Suisse. And within seconds, people are withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars. And within a few days, it's $100 billion has come out of this bank off the back of a tweet. And it doesn't make any sense unless you think about all the scandals that got us there. And then it kind of, it's like, oh, okay, people are pulling their money out because, you know, this bank's reputation is in the gutter. Why would you leave your money there? And, you know, the tweet might not be that meaningful, except.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is, yeah. I think you're right. It's bizarre that they continue to do it over and over and over again. I think what happens is you're right. It leads to this sort of reputation damage that means they're really brittle and fragile. And so actually in the end, it doesn't take much. I don't know if we want to get there yet.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you know, we could talk about the Bulgarian cocaine wrestlers with the cocaine smuggling. We haven't talked about the Mozambique tuna bond scandal, which I think is a fascinating and really illustrates a lack of risk culture. There's the guy who Patrice Les Godran who rips off the Prime Minister of Georgia. It goes on and on and on and on. And this is, you know, I think this is what's really interesting about Chris Suisse is that it's just relentless. I think as a reputational management kind of story, it's really, really fascinating.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is suddenly overnight the guy responsible for saying actually we better slow down here. And so I think if you think of that on a really human level, that's just an incredibly hard thing to do. And I think that decision to make that guy suddenly a different guy is kind of symbolic of how Credit Suisse makes these decisions and they don't work out.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When Archigos blows up, they get their money out quicker than Credit Suisse. So you could say that's bad luck, or it could be this risk lack of risk culture. There's an element of the story which is like deeply human, which I think also sort of tells you something, right? So they're sort of in their dealings with a hedge fund like Archie Goths, you kind of have two people. You have a key person who is trying to sell to Arkigos and sell them as much lending as possible. And you have another person who is responsible for managing the risk that comes with that relationship. And not long before Archigos blows up, the risk guy dies in an unfortunate skiing accident. And what you would think is you would put another risk guy in place. But actually, they take the sales guy and make him the risk guy. So the guy who's been until very recently responsible for SANA Archigos, give us as much of your business as possible.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think you're right. So Archigos is interesting for a different reason to credit Suisse for me. So to Green Cell, sorry, I think the thing with Archiegos is that it is massive when it blows up, it exposes the fact that the risk culture is not really there. And so you've sort of, in quick succession, these two green cell and archigus happen within days of each other, by the way. So on the one hand, you've got green cell that sort of says to clients, you can't trust this with your money. And then days later, you get this other blow up where they've essentially been lending money to a hedge fund that shows that, and they've loaned too much and the hedge fund blows up that says. Actually, our risk culture doesn't really exist. It's not very good. It's much worse than other banks. And it costs them $5 billion. I mean, it's an incredible amount of money. It's interesting. I mean, to some degree, they get a little bit unlucky, right? Like a bunch of banks are also lending money to Arkigos.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that Green Cell's biggest investor is a company called Softbank, who you probably know. And Softbank is a big relationship for Credit Suisse. And so when that company, when Greensoul blows up, it kind of ruins that relationship too. So they've sort of destroyed, it's just destroyed relationships all over the place. So it's cost them money, but mostly I think it's important because it's destroyed a lot of relationships.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“During COVID, Cameron had been lobbying some of his former colleagues to get access to special COVID loans and things to help GreenSoul's business along. So anyway, why that story is really important for Credit Suites. You know, they're losing billions of dollars all over the place. So why is this one important? I think why this one is important is because most of the scandals involve credit suites losing their shareholders' money. So they blow up and it's a hit to their profits and that's shareholders money essentially. In this case, they lose $10 billion. They get some of it back eventually, but they lose this money and it's their clients' money. This is not their shareholders. This is customers who've given their money to Credit Suisse. And so that's really important because those customers then start to feel like I'm not sure I can trust this bank with my money anymore. I think I might go elsewhere. And that's what they do. In the next few years, they start to go elsewhere. There's another element, which is...”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of collapsing, which maybe should have happened at that point, he goes and relaunches essentially with Credit Suisse. And Credit Suisse in the end puts $10 billion of their clients' money into funds that invest in loans that lex green sell sources. That business collapses, so completely collapses. And when it does, it becomes really clear that some of these loans are not very good. You're right, David Cameron was essentially an employee of the company. Lex Greensol had been sort of involved in government as an advisor on how you help small businesses. And he'd really used that position to enhance his own business. And then David Cameron out of office had joined LECS, which, so when the company blew up, that really helped that story become a mainstream story. I'd been following it for a few years as a finance story, but because of Cameron's involvement in the UK, it became more mainstream. And especially because it turned out that”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The book skips a few scandals because it just couldn't fit them all in. But yes, I think you're right to pinpoint those two because I think they are critical to what happens at the end. And GreenCull is really interesting. So Green Cell, you know, for those who don't know everything about it, essentially is Lex Greenll is this Australian farmer com financier set up this business that does something called supply chain finance. It's a little bit arcane, probably not worth getting into now, but it's essentially funding for small businesses in their dealings with larger businesses. And he funds this funds this, the loans that he makes, by going out to big investment managers and saying, if you give me the cash, I'll loan it out to these businesses. And he blows up with one Swiss asset manager, company called Gam, and then instead”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Derivatives and subprime mortgages and things that created the crisis in the first place. So they sort of knew it was coming. They could see it was coming and they got out. And so then to kind of crow about, oh, well, we didn't get hit as bad as others feels a bit disingenuous when in fact you kind of caused it. And there's only really one top sort of even close to a top bank executive in banking in the UK or the US or Switzerland who goes to jail as a result of the financial crisis and it's a Gaia Suisse. So he's a sort of trader in London who ends up in jail. Well, that's it. So yeah, they came out of this better than some other banks and certainly their reputation was slightly enhanced. But actually they did have a role in it. And they also did some bad stuff. But certainly, yeah, I mean, there were others, clearly others collapsed and they had a worse time.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does, and I'm very, very proud of it. So they kind of get through it. I mean, look, in the context of the financial crisis, they have a soft landing. They don't collapse and they don't need a government bailout. However, they do take a bailout from a Gulf state that gives them billions of dollars. And I've always sort of felt like the argument that some banks make, well, my bank didn't need a bailout, is kind of false because the entire industry got bailed out, right? Like the US government essentially bailed out the entire banking industry. And that might be a good thing or a bad thing. And you can argue either way. But it's kind of false to assume they were fine. They would have just, they would have been just fine without any help. That's not really true. I think the other thing that kind of I thought was interesting was part of the reason they didn't get hit with as being the losses that were as big as some of the other banks is because they were very much involved in the sort of”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Space of time, even if things go wrong for you, is it worth pushing the envelope? And some people clearly think it is. Some people will say, if I can make $50 million in a space of five years, and then I get canned because I did something wrong. Well, so what? I won the lottery, right? And so I think that money, the salaries are not for the bonuses on offer are a really big part of what goes wrong here. And in the end, you sort of see that the top executives are taken out so much money when the bank isn't making any profit either, which is just, you know, it's unbelievable, really.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For all sorts of problems, walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, it's extraordinary money. It's like winning the lottery over and over and over again. And yet, you know, and being accused of fraud and just saying, it's okay because I made so much money. And I think you do have to wonder how much does that skew people's behavior. So if you can make, you know, 10, 50, $100 million in a short space of time.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there's a couple of things to say. One, if you talk to people who work, it's first boss there. If you talk to people who work the first Boston, they loved it. People are really proud of the fact they work at this bank. It was sort of perceived within banking as like one of the best places to be, not just because of the money, but because they were also willing to do kind of funky things and really try new stuff. So people really loved it. I think you're right though. And one of the point to the money, and it's one of the reasons for me for writing the book, you know, it's a financial journalist. You can kind of become a bit in your to it. Like the amount of money knocking around in their world, which is so extraordinary, but it's so commonplace in their world that it becomes kind of normalized. And I think it's important in books like this to kind of talk about it because actually it's really odd. It's unusual. And as you say, people are taking away kind of, you know, people who are not successful and sometimes end up in call.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take a government bailout after the crisis UBS has a big rogue trader scandal in London. So UBS has its problems too, but generally speaking, UBS is a little bit more straight-laced. It is a more successful bank within Switzerland, I think it's fair to say. And there are these two rivals. I think being second best probably is part of what pushes Crowd Suisse to sort of take on more risk, trying to catch up with its rival. You're right, there were mergers talked about over and over and over again. It's almost like every other year somebody's talking about a merger most of the time. It never happens. I think often that's because of the egos involved more than a rationale. But I think there's also a case that if two big banks is a challenge for Switzerland, then one enormous bank is even more of a challenge. Don't want to leap too far ahead, but in the end.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In France and the UK and even Italy were kind of developing economically. Switzerland was really in danger of falling behind. And they sort of developed a banking industry as part of a sort of move to make sure they weren't forgotten, the result of which has been that the banks have become kind of outsized. These are enormous banks in a relatively small country. The comparable place, I suppose, would have been like Iceland in the run-up to the financial crisis where they also had a huge banking sector, which went a crashed, crashed the whole country. And I think that is kind of loomed over Switzerland for a long time. You've got these two enormous banks and some others. And that's putting a lot of eggs in one basket. I think the rivalry with UBS is really fascinating because UBS is sort of also has its scandals. In the financial crisis, UBS needs a bailout from the Swiss government. Swiss kind of famously and is very fiercely executives there were fiercely proud of the fact they didn't.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's fascinating, right? I mean, I think, first of all, I'm no expert on Swiss culture, right? I'm not a Swiss historian or Swiss sociologist or something, but I have obviously picked up some stuff about Switzerland thinking about this book and also talking to people there a lot. And I think it's the first distinction that I think is really important is from the outside, we think of when we think of Switzerland, we think of banking and a bunch of other clich ⁇ s. Actually, banking is only really, it's kind of a Zurich thing. And Switzerland is made up of all the cantons. And banking is really unique to Zurich. And in other parts of Switzerland, they don't necessarily love the idea that their country is kind of perceived as this hub of banking. And then secondly, I think it's important to say that, you know, a couple of hundred years ago, Switzerland was kind of an economic backwater. It was kind of this place that was forgotten in Europe as other countries, Germany.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just in Switzerland, actually, in the UK and in France and in the US too. So which brings up sort of an important point that Credit Suisse isn't the only bank with scandals. The difference of credit suises, they have all the scandals. Most of the other banks have some of them, but Credit Suisse has the lot. And that's really interesting. Why is it always Credit Suisse?”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think you can tie that all into kind of Swiss banking privacy. So this law they introduced 100 years ago, which was to, in theory, protect clients of the bank from intrusion by governments who might want to come and come after their money. But in practice then becomes this kind of veil they hide behind and it attracts the wrong kind of clients, I think. I'm sure there are good clients who want privacy as well, but there are many, many others who say, actually, this is really handy. If I can put my money in Switzerland and nobody needs to know where it is and nobody knows who I am, then that's great. Sanctions, I think, is an interesting one because it's not just Credit Suites, right? They're breaches sanctions. Actually, kind of a lot of other banks do it too. I think Credit Suisse gets caught. And I think it's worth exploring what they did because I think some of the behavior is really egregious. But actually a lot of other banks breach sanctions too.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we ought to pay out, then that sends a signal to everybody in the bank we don't think this is the right way to behave and we'd like to stop it. But if you keep pushing it down the line, kind of says to everyone the opposite is true.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that comes out time and time again. And you're right, through many of these scandals, the response of the bank is to either blame an individual or kick it down the line, right? To sort of not settle, not deal with the legal stuff, but just to push the legal issues further down the line. And the effect of which is to essentially say, you know, to not take responsibility for any of it. And I think that's really problematic because I think it sends a message that this is part of our business. This is what we do, whether that's Netsi Gold, whether that's breaching sanctions or some of the other scandals that come later. It's kind of a risk of our business. And so culturally, I think if you send that signal to everyone who works in the bank, then you kind of have to expect that they will misbehave from time to time, right? I think it's sort of inevitable. If you instead settle and say, hold your hands up and say, you know, we did something really wrong and we're going to pay out.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eventually, she gets it in the 1990s. I mean, this is sort of staggering that this is going on as recently as then, but it continues to go on even after that. So in the 90s, they pay a big, the Swiss banks collectively pay a big settlement. I say big, but a lot of people think it should have been much larger. And in fact, they kind of agree at Crow Suisse to have a monitor placed in the bank by the Americans who spends decades trying to find more evidence of money they've either taken on behalf of the Nazis or from victims of the Holocaust who haven't been given their money back. And in fact, as recently as kind of as Credit Suisse is collapsing, this guy is still there, still allegedly finding more information that ties the bank back to its Nazi past.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Money, but what they also did was in the run up to the war, a lot of Jewish people around Europe would say, well, I'm worried about the Nazis. I'm worried they're going to come for me. So I'm going to put my money elsewhere. And there's an example I run through in the book has been reported elsewhere by a fantastic example. A woman whose father had a factory in Eastern Europe and he saw the Nazis coming and said, well, I'm going to get some of this money out. And he put some money in a bank in the UK. He put some money in a bank in Paris and he put some money in Kreutz-Suisse. And after the war, she came to get the money out. She had his account details and she had her name and she knew everything about accounts and she went to London and gets the money. She goes to Paris. She gets the money. She goes to Kraus Suisse and they say, I'm really sorry. Have you got a debt certificate? And her father had died in Auschwitz. So of course she doesn't have a death certificate. And so they refuse to give her the money for years and years and years. And while she's sort of trying to get this money back, they're just taking fees out of the account.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happens essentially in the 1990s is a bunch of senators in the US decide that they need to look into this and they start to dig into Krausu's, but also the rest of Swiss banking. And what they find is that actually there's still a lot of money there that is tied to either victims of the Holocaust or to the Nazis. And when they push the Swiss banks and CrowdSuis in particular to complain on this, the instinct of the Swiss banks, in particular of Crow Suisse, is to say, you know, to try and cover it up. So, you know, it's interesting as well, I think, to look at exactly what they did. So we sort of, I think, as I say, it's a bit of a cliche to think they took money from the Nazis. They took gold from the Nazis and laundered it when other banks around Europe wouldn't. Sort of under the guise of neutrality, right? So Switzerland's neutral. And I think we tend to think that's really a positive sometimes, but actually it sort of means they're in some ways they're kind of amoral. So yes, they took money from the Nazis and they laundered that.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're right to point to the scandals, and the whole, you know, I could have written a book in many different ways. When you have a book like this, you could write in many different ways. I chose to write about the scandals because I think they're really important to what happens at Credit Suisse because they sort of destroy the trust that underpins banking. Yeah, let's start with Natsi Gold, which probably it's not the first scandal, but it's certainly a really big one and a really important one, I think. It's a bit of a cliche, right, to talk about Swiss banks and Nazi gold. I think it's sort of, you know, people talk about it and they don't actually think too much about it. I found it shocking, frankly. Once it started to dig into it, how recent this was. This was not a historic thing. I mean, obviously, they took the money 100 years ago or so, but actually they were still dealing with the legacy of that problem, at least as recently as the 1990s and beyond.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it is. I think, as I say, there's this sort of constant tension, and it means that they're constantly pulling in one direction and then in the opposite direction. And that means they're laying people off and then hiring big names. And there's not much stability there. I should say there are a lot of people who worked at Credit Suisse who loved it over the years because partly because of this kind of culture that was sort of gung-ho and we're going to do things differently. But this push and pull between the different strategies constantly, especially the last 25, 30 years or so, was really challenging, I think. And so they, unlike some other banks who said, this is what we're going to focus on, we're going to do this one thing really well. Creates never quite got there. Or when it did, it kind of would suddenly rip that up and start again. So yeah, I think that is sort of throughout the story of Credit Suisse. There's this kind of what is it we really want to be known for? And as a result, it's sort of constantly changing. And it's whiplash for people who work there.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“World, everything about them, the negative side of which is you probably attract clients who don't want to tell the world anything about them that's oligarchs, their spots, organized crime, lots of people who got something to hide. And then the investment bank.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up there because the Swiss culture and the Wall Street culture Wall Street slash city of London culture vary very different, both really like money, but the Swiss culture is generally to kind of be a bit more modest about that and hide it a little bit. And the Wall Street City of London culture is much more flash and we want to show everything we've got. So they both love the money, but they have very different attitudes to how you present yourself around that money. So that leads to a sort of constant tension, which sort of upsets executives often. And then I think there's a sort of third element to it, which is that they both have problems. You know, the Swiss private bank has this kind of, it relies on this sort of bank secrecy act that the Swiss have had for almost 100 years now, which the benefit of which is, you know, you can help your clients and not tell them.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part of it was trying to find what is it about credits that makes credits collapse rather than some other bank. They're essentially all doing similar kind of things. So why is it that this one collapses? And one other things that I thought was really important was that there was a unique element about the way the bank was set up in that it was essentially half Swiss and half an American Wall Street investment bank. In both cases, it kind of wasn't the top level. It was close to the top level, but it wasn't the best Swiss private bank. It wasn't the best Wall Street investment bank. It was kind of the second best in both worlds. And so there was this constant effort to be the best, which meant that there's constantly trying to sort of push the envelope, push the boundaries on risks in both parts of the organization. I think there's also some unique tensions that”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Valuable sources in a way that they're not before the bankers collapse. So, yeah, I think in moments of crisis as a journalist, that is a really rich time to kind of talk to people, as always you've got to kind of balance off all the different views, all the different things you get told and figure out what is the most truthful version of events. What is the right thing to say here? Because you know that everybody comes to the table with their own biases and they only always have part of the story.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think you're on to something. I think it's almost like they've got a lot to lose. They all want to make sure it's not them to blame. So what happens actually at an organization like Credit Suisse, first of all, thousands and thousands of employees, not all of them have got really insightful things to say? Maybe they don't actually know what really happened a lot of them, but they might have little bits and pieces. So they all suddenly become available as sources because they're no longer kind of bound by having to stick to their careers are kind of over to some degree already at the bank so they're willing to talk. But I think also at the very top levels, everybody wants to give their version of the story, right? Everybody wants to say, well, okay, some people want to say I had a little bit to play in it. It's partly my fault, but I also think there's this other stuff. Some people want to say it's got nothing to do with me and this is the person you should speak to. And this is the thing you should look into. But all of those people become really.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One or two critical sources who had known for a while got in touch and said, if you're doing a book on credit suites, I'd be willing to talk to you and I'll get everyone else to talk to you too. And I thought, okay, well, now I have critical mass. Now I can try and get others. And so that was a bit of a moment where, yeah, suddenly I had just sort of gone over the edge and now there was enough to do it. Honestly, those couple of sources were helpful, but in the end, it was just a lot more work than that. Once you start to take it on, you realize, as always, there's so much more to be said, so many more people to talk to.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right after what happens when you write a book is straight away the agent, the publisher, on your back, what are you going to do next? And that's sort of what happened to me with my first book. What are you going to do next? And at the time, I sort of said, I think Credit Suisse is a really interesting story. My insights into it from this previous book, they've kind of given me some, you know, I think there's something there that needs to be explained. To be quite honest, my agent publisher were like, yeah, well, let's keep an eye on it. And then within this short period of time, Chris Suisse actually collapsed. They came back to me and said, remember when you said you would do something on Crow Suisse? So suddenly I was sort of, oh yeah, I did say that, didn't I? But there was a moment. I was kind of thinking, did I have enough? Was I the person to write it or were there other journalists who would do a better job, you know, were there people who were closer, had better sources? So I think that's kind of an important thing to ask yourself as a journalist. And as I was asking myself this question,”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I think you're right. It's a huge story. One of the biggest banks in the world, one of only a handful of banks that were kind of designated as systemically important on a global basis. So what drew me to that is, yeah, I think, you know, I'm a financial journalist. And so it's appealing to try and explain what on earth happened there. How does something like that, how does a bank that big collapse? Something's clearly gone wrong. And I think that's kind of the job of journalists to try and figure out why things go wrong. I mean, I had a personal interest as well. My previous book about a company called Greensill, which had collapsed a few years earlier, was deeply connected to Kraut Suisse and really a part of the reason for CrowdSuis's collapse. So I sort of was drawn to it from the first book. And as I say, I think something big like that on your beat as a journalist, it's almost imperative that you sort of, if you can write about it, you try to write about it.”
2025-01-17 · Intelligence Squared · Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, with Duncan Mavin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT