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Description
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.
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Pegasus Books |
| Publish Date | March 04, 2025 |
| Pages | 336 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781639368693 |
| Dimensions | 228.6 X 152.4 X 35.6 mm | 476.3 g |
About the Author
Duncan Mavin is a veteran international financial journalist. He has been a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and was the WSJ’s Financial Editor for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He has also been Managing Editor for Barron’s Group and is the UK bestselling author of the Lex Greensill exposé Pyramid of Lies. Meltdown is his first book to be published in America.
Reviews
"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."
"This lucid, tart, and entertaining account offers a window into the grubby chicanery and boneheaded bets that plague high finance."
"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."
“A gripping account of how the Swiss bank collapsed under the weight of scandal after scandal”
“Meltdown is an eminently readable survey of Credit Suisse’s tawdry history, and many of the industry’s darker secrets.”
"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."
"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."
"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.”
"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.”
"Through deep meticulous reporting and compelling storytelling, Mavin chronicles the gradual, quiet demise, and then shockingly sudden collapse, of what was once one of the world’s most trusted financial institutions. A gripping story of power, greed, and panic, and a humbling reminder of the enormous cost of capitalism going awry.”
"This lucid, tart, and entertaining account offers a window into the grubby chicanery and boneheaded bets that plague high finance."
"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."
“A gripping account of how the Swiss bank collapsed under the weight of scandal after scandal”
“Meltdown is an eminently readable survey of Credit Suisse’s tawdry history, and many of the industry’s darker secrets.”
"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."
"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."
"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.”
"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.”
"Through deep meticulous reporting and compelling storytelling, Mavin chronicles the gradual, quiet demise, and then shockingly sudden collapse, of what was once one of the world’s most trusted financial institutions. A gripping story of power, greed, and panic, and a humbling reminder of the enormous cost of capitalism going awry.”
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