The collapse of Credit Suisse in 2023 was borne out of years of self-inflicted wounds through reckless risk-taking, botched strategies, and repeated hits to its reputation. Long before panic set in, the damage had already been done. A quick Credit Suisse UBS takeover followed to prevent the situation from developing into a global crisis.
So, in an attempt, let us try to understand why Credit Suisse failed, how scandals such as Archegos and Greensill contributed, what triggered the Credit Suisse bank run of 2023, and what the FINMA Credit Suisse report illuminated about one of the most dramatic failures in modern banking history.
Once upon a time, Credit Suisse was the very pillar of Swiss banking, a name that inspired confidence worldwide. But by the end of 2022, its balance sheet echoed a much different tale. Assets under management fell from CHF 1.6 trillion in 2021 to CHF 1.3 trillion, and its share price had collapsed. The question then was not just why Credit Suisse failed but also why no one stopped the downward spiral much earlier.
One scandal might be survivable. Credit Suisse stacked them up like dominoes:
Each of these scandals drained clients' confidence. By 2023, Credit Suisse was not merely facing financial losses but rather had run into a trust gap that it could no longer fill.
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Credit Suisse had promised to scale back its risky investment banking operations and focus on wealth management. But the execution was slow and sporadic. On the other hand, the Swiss regulator FINMA granted leeway that permitted the bank to keep running with vulnerabilities in plain sight. According to the FINMA Credit Suisse report, the bank’s risk culture and governance failures were known for years but not fixed.
By late 2022, nervous clients were already pulling money. Then came March 2023, when the collapse of U.S. lenders Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank sent shockwaves through global markets. Investors took one look at Credit Suisse’s troubled history and ran.
In just a matter of days, clients withdrew more than CHF 110 billion. This Credit Suisse bank run 2023 drained liquidity so fast that the bank was on the brink of insolvency. When Saudi National Bank, Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder, said it wouldn’t inject more capital, the final safety net disappeared.
At that point, the choice was simple: a rescue deal or a collapse that could spread far beyond Switzerland.
On March 19, 2023, Swiss authorities stepped in. The Credit Suisse UBS takeover was hammered out over a weekend to avoid a Monday market panic. UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse for CHF 3 billion, a fraction of its former value, in an all-stock deal.
The takeover came with extraordinary measures:
When the deal closed in June 2023, UBS effectively absorbed its oldest rival, ending Credit Suisse’s 167-year history as an independent bank.
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If the Credit Suisse collapse was a car crash, Archegos and Greensill were two of the biggest impacts that smashed its frame.
Both cases revealed the same problem: a willingness to chase returns without proper risk management.
After the dust settled, FINMA, Switzerland’s financial regulator, released a detailed investigation into the collapse. The FINMA Credit Suisse report didn’t mince words:
The report also criticized FINMA’s own role, acknowledging it lacked certain powers that might have allowed earlier intervention. That has since sparked calls for regulatory reform to prevent another disaster of this scale.
This was no run-of-the-mill corporate failure. The Credit Suisse collapse has much wider implications:
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The story as to why Credit Suisse failed is not one about bad luck; it is one about bad decisions over the years, lack of control over risk, and a complete loss of viability in the eyes of its clients. Scandals like Archegos and Greensill were not isolated incidents but presented symptoms of a clearly wider cultural and governance issue.
By the time the Credit Suisse bank run 2023 hit, the damage was irreversible. The Credit Suisse UBS takeover wasn’t a strategic merger, it was a last-minute rescue to keep a historic institution’s collapse from becoming a global financial shockwave.
The FINMA Credit Suisse report makes one thing clear: this didn’t have to happen. But in banking, once trust is gone, so is the bank. And in Credit Suisse’s case, no amount of liquidity could buy it back.
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