Meltdown

Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse

Duncan Mavin

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.

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Endorsements & Reviews

"Duncan Mavin’s gripping account of the bank’s 2023 implosion exposes a crisis decades in the making. The greatest failures of Credit Suisse’s compliance and risk officers are concisely catalogued by Mavin, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor. Meltdown is a page turner." Financial Times

"In Meltdown, Duncan Mavin describes the grand rise and ignominious fall of a financial behemoth. This story, capably summarized by Duncan Mavin nicely encapsulates the larger Credit Suisse narrative: Full of petty, pointless squabbles, generally unfolding on the edge of legality, it’s not exactly an epic of corporate hubris, nor quite a morality play of corporate greed, but a procession of lazy grifts and dumb mistakes, repeated for decades." New York Times Book Review

"This lucid, tart, and entertaining account offers a window into the grubby chicanery and boneheaded bets that plague high finance." Publishers Weekly

"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." Kirkus Reviews

“A gripping account of how the Swiss bank collapsed under the weight of scandal after scandal” The Times (UK)

“Meltdown is an eminently readable survey of Credit Suisse’s tawdry history, and many of the industry’s darker secrets.” The Telegraph

 

"Duncan Mavin is well placed to tell this corporate horror story, having written a book about one of Credit Suisse’s most notorious clients, Lex Greensill, an Australian melon farmer turned fintech champion. Greensill Capital, which employed David Cameron as a Whitehall lobbyist and international frontman, turned out to be a house of cards. Meltdown is a repeat demolition job, a pacy account of Credit Suisse’s rise and fall." The Spectator

"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."
Bradley Hope, New York Times bestselling author of Billion Dollar Whale and Blood and Oil

"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.” Sean Silcoff, author of Losing the Signal

"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.” Andy Verity, BBC Economics correspondent and author of Rigged