All It Took For Credit Suisse To Lose $5.5 Billion Was For People To Ignore Huge Risks Piling Up That Weren’t Making The Bank Any Money
Did you think that $5.5 billion disasters that lead to house-cleanings at both the investment bank and compliance department, cutting the prime brokerage business to the bone, an avalanche of ominous letters and phone calls from regulators and prosecutors, and enough fury to cause even the Swiss to consider—however briefly—actually holding bankers to account just sort of, you know, happen, well, uh, you pretty much hit the nail on the head, according to Credit Suisse’s in-house investigation into the Archegos Capital Management debacle.
Credit Suisse Group AG failed to properly monitor tens of billions of dollars of exposure that piled up while handling trades for Archegos Capital Management that generated relatively little revenue, according to people briefed on the findings of the bank’s internal inquiry.
The report into how the bank lost about $5.5 billion tied to the collapse of Bill Hwang’s family office paints a picture of due diligence failings as employees chased business that made little economic sense, the people said, asking not to be identified because the conclusions aren’t yet public…. Despite the report’s withering assessment of how the lender got burned when the U.S. hedge fund collapsed earlier this year, it doesn’t allege criminality inside the Swiss bank, the people said.
They never do, do they?
Credit Suisse’s Archegos Inquiry Rips Bank’s Due Diligence [Bloomberg]
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