Spies and scandal: How Credit Suisse went out of business

In 2015, Iqbal Khan was on top of the world.The 34-year-old finance wunderkind, who had moved from Pakistan to Switzerland when he was just a teenager, was promoted to head of international wealth management at Credit Suisse, the global investment bank.

“Even Khan was shocked” by his fast ascension, writes Duncan Mavin in his new book, “Meltdown: Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse” (Pegasus Books), out now.But his success would be short-lived.Khan, who was “widely seen as the ‘crown prince’ [of Credit Suisse], the CEO-in-waiting,” would soon become ensnared in one of the most bizarre scandals in the history of global finance, “one which laid bare the jealousies, egos and betrayals that frequently characterized the bank,” writes Mavin.

“The affair came to be known as ‘spygate.’ ”Just a few years after his dramatic rise within the company, Khan realized that he was being tailed by private detectives, hired by executives at Credit Suisse.They were part of a team that’d been tracking Khan for weeks.

“They’d observed him at his home, when he was out jogging, when he was having a coffee with former colleagues,” writes Mavin.“Their mandate was to take photos and record evidence of anyone with whom Khan met,” and that included his children.The investigation was prompted by suspicions that Khan might try to poach his best co-workers and take them to a competing bank.

Although Credit Suisse’s CEO Tidjane Thiam never admitted publicly to the scheme, behind the scenes he allegedly grumbled that “the snoops had been amateurish,” writes Mavin.Even more alarming, just weeks after spygate was exposed, the consultant who arranged the surveillance operation committed suicide under mysterious circumstances.For any other bank, the scandal might have defined their legacy or even destroyed it.

But for Credit Suisse, one of the biggest banks in the world, it was business as usual.How did it come to this? The bank, founde...