
Credit Suisse scandal shakes Zurich’s elite - kenneth
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-spygate-_credit-suisse-scandal-shakes-zurich-s-elite/45280086
======
FabHK
Matt Levine had written about it before in his excellent _Money Stuff_ column
on Bloomberg:

> > [Thiam] was hosting a new year’s drinks party.

> > Among his 60 or so guests were many locals from the Zurich suburb of
> Herrliberg, along with a clutch of top Credit Suisse executives and his new
> neighbors -- Iqbal Khan, the bank’s wealth-management chief, and his wife.

> > Before long, it all went wrong. A remark by Khan to Thiam’s partner set
> off a bitter feud between the two alpha males. The guest had insulted the
> state of the garden, according to a person who was there. Later, Thiam
> tapped Khan on the shoulder and asked for a word. The two went downstairs
> and argued before later resurfacing.

> “A bitter feud between the two alpha males” over the state of Thiam’s
> garden, I love it, investment banking is the best. For a while, some people
> thought that this scandal might even take down Thiam, and I can’t imagine a
> better reason for losing the high-profile and lucrative top job at a global
> bank than “I had to defend the honor of my garden.”

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2019-09-23/mon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2019-09-23/money-
stuff-we-wants-a-new-boss)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/the-
tr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/the-trades-will-
be-free-now)

~~~
b0tch7
Matt Levine is the man.

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ElonMuskrat
Credit Suisse's website should display a counter with the heading: "Days since
last Credit Suisse scandal".

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ggambetta
> the contractor who acted as a middle man between Credit Suisse and a private
> investigation firm took his own life.

Damn. I wonder whether there was any foul play involved, or just too much
pressure to handle.

~~~
markus_zhang
Common sense says there is usually a LOT of foul play among high ranking
banking officials.

~~~
Gibbon1
Seriously there is some sort of amnesia effect going on. The rate that banking
execs get in trouble closely matches mafia families.

~~~
markus_zhang
Also their suicide and accidental death rate...

------
riazrizvi
Here’s [1] an article about JPMorgan doing similar employee surveillance
starting in 2009.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-
thiel...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/)

------
dagaci
I wonder if Mr Khan and Mr Thiam are still living next to each other and if Mr
Khans view of the lake is still being blocked by the two trees.

What is more astonishing is amount of money these guys manage is measured in
the Trillions of USD.

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objektif
If anyone is curious about why they fought in the first place, apart from work
rivalry, I came across an article that explains. It is because Khan bought the
house next to Thiam and leveled it. Took his sweet time, 2 years or so, to
build a new house. I can see how continuous construction for two years can be
very annoying.

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lostmsu
Skimming though the article did not explain what the scandal is about.

~~~
yborg
The CEO of Credit Suisse was accused of hiring an investigator to follow
around a former executive who went to rival UBS. The "scandal" is that Swiss
bankers are supposed to be too Swiss to do such things. The irony is that
neither the CEO nor the executive are actually Swiss because high finance
these days knows no nation.

~~~
emeidi
Iqbal Khan is Swiss

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kenneth
Additionally, this article has a lot more background on the scandal:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-01/thiam-
and...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-01/thiam-and-khan-
fought-at-a-party-it-only-got-worse-from-there)

------
w1nst0nsm1th
The tone of this article is incredibly provincial for something published on
HN...

It's seems to be nothing more than mundane chit-chat with not so much of
interest outside Zurich social casting.

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dontbenebby
The article is light on details of this spying, I'd be curious what they did.
Followed folks? Pushed malware to phones ala NSO?

------
bitL
Does Switzerland have any future? It's no longer a bank haven for rich
Europeans evading taxes nor 3rd world dictators, its banks don't show
entrepreneurial spirit in finding and investing into high-potential startups,
rather to well-connected wantrepreneurs, there are no easy money to be made in
Eastern Europe/Russia any longer, and its conservatism is likely going to
prevent them from making necessary changes until the decline is felt in upper
strata of society.

~~~
elorant
Switzerland has some of the largest corporations in the world in the
pharmaceutical industry, and they're by far leaders in the watchmaking
industry. Banking isn't the only business they rely on.

~~~
bitL
I know about Basel and its pharma industry that is still top-notch, but as for
banking they seem to go down rather quickly even if the effect is not going to
be felt for the next decade outside negative interest rates. As for watches, I
am not sure that is very relevant since smartphones, outside quickly
converting expensive watches into cash while on the run from authorities...

~~~
zepearl
> _...as for banking they seem to go down rather quickly..._

I do think that Switzerland might have a problem with banks soon or later, but
currently I don't see such situation clearly developing (rather more in
Germany with Commerzbank & Deutsche Bank?).

------
equalunique
Does this have any connection to the "Spygate"[0] story in the US?

[0] [http://archive.is/PxYXO](http://archive.is/PxYXO)

* The facts of this story are still widely disputed beyond what the Wikipedia article shows.

~~~
uncoder0
It does not appear to be related. As a side note calling the US Spygate a
'conspiracy theory' on wiki seems a bit disingenuous. It'll all come out
eventually and be interesting to see how history views those events... 'OCONUS
lures', foreign intel collusion, information laundering through intel (push &
pull) and all. It seems very fishy, looking forward to the release of the
facts. From my rather deep research I'd put it more in the plausible but,
unverified category rather than full blown 'false conspiracy theory'.

~~~
equalunique
I agree that the article doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. One
must understand that the Wikipedia acticle's content is controlled by
gatekeeping-editors who collectively agree on what they want it to say. Trying
to change the narrative there is an uphill, literally rigged battle.

I am also suspicious that reporting on this new "spygate" story might be an
attempt to muddy the SEO waters.

------
unaxk38
An apt reminder that we're all just meat bags at the end of the day.

~~~
protonfish
Yeah, I'm not including myself with entitled man-children that throw a tantrum
when their garden is impugned. This is more of a reminder that our rulers are
less ethical, less self-disciplined, and less wise than the average Joe. Why?
Because they can be.

~~~
microcolonel
In what sense are Credit Suisse execs "our rulers"?

~~~
jjoonathan
To the degree that they have money and that money is power.

~~~
microcolonel
Money may make you powerful in some context, but being powerful doesn't make
you a ruler.

~~~
0_gravitas
power implies a degree of control over _something_ , one doesnt need to have
'serfs' to be a ruler of some sort, i am the ruler of my raspberry pi, it will
do what i say, and i am in control of it

~~~
microcolonel
The original question was about what would qualify somebody as "our ruler". I
certainly don't see how I am _ruled_ by a Credit Suisse executive, or how I
would be ruled by such an executive even as a Schweitzer.

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humble_engineer
The Vatican was raided a few weeks ago at the same time AG Barr was visited
the Italian intelligence minister. I would bet money this is related somehow.

~~~
equalunique
Regardless of an alleged relation, I am very interested to know the details of
Barr's Europe trip. I wonder if he will be visiting the FBI office in Ukraine.

------
throw7
The swiss rolled over after 9/11\. That's when I knew the supposed and
"renowned" swiss "privacy" and "discretion" was bunk.

------
hos234
"It’s not just that power shifts from one country to another, from one
political party to another, from one business model to another, it’s this:
Power is decaying" \- Moises Naim [The End of Power] The book basically says,
it is becoming easier to get power, harder to use it to control others and
harder to keep it once you have it.

~~~
cat199
> easier to get power, harder to use it to control others and harder to keep
> it once you have it.

curious - if it's harder to use/keep, how is it actually 'power'?

~~~
SllX
You have power but so do a lot of other people. You use your power to serve
your best interests, but people with equal or greater power are also acting in
their best interests and sometimes that means your power and their power
clashes.

When that happens, you don’t always get the result you want, but maybe neither
of you gets the results you want. Maybe what ends up happening is some kind of
canceling out of your respective powers.

If the power dynamics in the market are diverse enough, people with competing
interests and ideologies have various forms of power, then this will happen
more often than not and you’ll see power canceling out power more often than
you see power effecting the influence of the people that wield it.

~~~
hos234
Thats a very good answer. Requires one further piece.

Cancellation of competing power occurs as Interconnections Increase. The more
connected the world gets the more power bumps into each other.

For anyone interested in addition to End of Power, another good book is Niall
Ferguson's The Square and the Tower. It tells the story through different
moments in history of what happens to Power(Hierarchies) when they get
connected to the Network.

