This Business
Sucks

Credit Suisse is a global investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. They’ve gained infamy for failing to prevent money laundering to a known Bulgarian criminal gang, their involvement in the Mozambique “tuna bonds” loan scandal and assisting banking clients with ties to trafficking and torture. But even their penchant for coloring far outside the lines hasn’t stopped them from almost going under.

If you’re going to do business with some of the world’s worst human beings, you’d hope that the payoff would be immense — but that doesn’t appear to be the case. In 2021, Credit Suisse announced “significant losses,” causing anxiety about a potential Lehman Brothers-esque catastrophe that could shake the global financial market to its core.

In March 2023, Credit Suisse announced its plan to borrow 50 billion francs ($53.7 billion USD) from the Swiss National Bank (UBS). The news hasn’t been met with high praise, even as investors watched Credit Suisse’s shares soar by 30%. The “rescue” of yet another failing financial institution is expected to cost UBS up to $17 billion in losses. 

This all came after the since-resigned chair of the Saudi National Bank stated they were done injecting money into the perpetually floundering Credit Suisse. The move triggered a cessation of buying/trading Credit Suisse stocks, leading to shares of other European banks plummeting — some by double digits.

The Credit Suisse ordeal is just another example of huge players in the financial market making careless and consequence-free decisions with no plan for risk management. They play with people’s livelihoods like it means nothing and are unrepentant, as each bad move puts the global financial markets at risk. As the Swiss saying goes: “The poor lack much, but the greedy more.”

Like a petulant and devious child, Credit Suisse needs to be monitored at all times. CreditSuisse.Sucks could be used to babysit the beleaguered bank as it lurches from one catastrophe to the next.