Credit Suisse confirms 50% bonus cut, Zero for Exec, amid terrible results | Hacker News Reader

Credit Suisse confirms 50% bonus cut, Zero for Exec, amid terrible results

efinancialcareers.com

122 pointsaruanavekar43 comments

Credit Suisse is in free-fall. Down 83% in fixed income sales and trading. Down 95% in equities sales and trading. Down by half in M&A. On trial for cocaine dealing.

A bank losing all its income and going down in a criminal probe into a coke dealer. It'd be a good SNL skit if there weren't so many lives on the line.

It's amazing a bonus pool exists at all.

Could they potentially collapse? Or are they too big to fail as well? Not sure how it works when it comes to non-US megabanks.

Too Big To Fail. Swiss government will prop them up.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/swiss-govt-proposes...

> Swiss government will prop them up

Unlikely. The article describes a lender-of-last-resort mechanism more than a bail-out [1]. It comports with the EU's ELA [2]. It's an exorbitant privilege, for sure, but not TBTF.

[1] https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home/the-fdf/nsb-news_list.m...

[2] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/ecb.agreementemergen...

I will bet you an adult beverage of your choice if push comes to shove, they will rescue CS.

> if push comes to shove, they will rescue CS

Depends on the circumstances. If they manage to take someone else (read: UBS) down with them, probably. If they blow up on their lonesome, probably not.

They will collapse sooner rather than later and the gov has to save them

Collapse as a business, sure, but its portfolio probably won't go underwater. It's failing in a different way from a bank that takes on too many bad loans and can't fund its liabilities.

A merger with UBS was mooted once. Now it looks more likely UBS is waiting for it to fall completely and pick up the good bits on the cheap.

> On trial for cocaine dealing.

#1 rule of banking: never get high off your own supply.

>On trial for cocaine dealing.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/court-convicts-cred...

"A former employee was found guilty of money-laundering in the trial, which included testimony on murders and cash stuffed into suitcases [...]"

Whew!

They're talking in percentage terms because you'd be shocked if they were talking cash.

Traders get million pound bonuses. or more. Goodness knows what a bonus is worth, but I'd be extremely happy with 50% of whatever it is.

It might seem odd to be paying bonuses at all, but to be fair, mega bonuses are part of the culture of share trading and if you have no bonuses then you have no traders, they'll go elsewhere.

Colleague worked in the London office at Credit Suisse and all exotic car dealerships had cars lined up for sale outside the office on bonus day in early 2000s.

Trickle down economics at its best

Shouldn't other companies be wary of hiring traders from a firm with such terrible results?

How much is it the trader and how much is it the company? Hard to gauge

“ It has, however, increased salaries.”

These guys can’t lose. They either win or win big time even while running their company into the ground. Time for some government bailouts so they can go on a luxury retreat like AIG execs did in 2008.

Yeah, .gov to the rescue.

I am still kicking myself to this day I didn't throw money into AIG when it was trading around $1-2 per share. I did make out decently off BoA stock in the same time period though.

I bought a little at the low (but didn't have much money to play with at the time, so we're talking extremely small potatoes all around) but also put quite a bit (relatively) into Freddie, reckoning they'd also pop back plenty fast with government intervention.

Whoops.

Most of their compensation does not come from salaries - especially at the exec level. Nor is Credit Suisse going down going to affect normal people or the greater economy. This is not a win for execs, this is a way to placate employees despite half their bonuses disappearing.

> Nor is Credit Suisse going down going to affect normal people or the greater economy.

Really? They have 50,000 employees and two million clients.

The global economy will barely blink at that, so long as what's taking Credit Suisse down isn't a more widespread issue (and it doesn't appear to be).

Most of those clients will simply move to another bank as needed, there are better alternatives.

The real question is, is how widespread is the problem. 2008 taught us there is no bottom to worse.

Large financial institutions have failed in the past, and history has shown us that the people at the top usually land on their feet, with piles of money and assets.

Whereas everyone then finds out their employer lost their retirement fund, and has to sell their homes, etc.

So I think people are reasonably concerned about how a bunch of execs screwing up if going impact that non-millionaires.

“I’ve been at this bank for 10 years and I’ve seen some things you wouldn’t believe. But when all is said and done these guys do not lose money.

They don’t care if everyone else does but they don’t lose.”

https://youtu.be/xW1CrQu_H6E

I hate this simplistic attitude so much. Okay how do you expect the bank to "pull itself by the bootstraps" and not rely on a govermnet bailout? Do you expect bright employees to stay on board or flock in and fix things out of the kindness of their hearts? They have to pay people to keep things from getting worse. And yes they could get worse.

To continue along these lines- If the bank fails everyone looses their jobs. Rich executives will be fine and as it goes down the line the negative impact gets worse.

If the government bails out the bank it's saving some jobs and is it possible to make some of that investment back?

I find unacceptable to have institutions that are highly profitable in good times and force the taxpayer to bail them out when they overplayed their hand. They should be treated like any other company. Either go bankrupt or be bought by somebody else. Anything else is a recipe for massive corruption.

I did some consulting work for them in the Canary Wharf office back in maybe 2016?-ish. Even then it was clear the firm was in free fall- I've never seen anything like it and that's all I'll say.

Relatedly:

"Crooks, kleptocrats and crises: a timeline of Credit Suisse scandals"

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/21/tax-timeline-cr...

So, is Credit Suisse considered "too big to fail?" If no, are there any ramifications if it were to collapse? It seems like the writing has been on the wall for a while now, so I would hope preparations have been made and it would not be catastrophic, but it's honestly a little crazy to see a ~170 year old institution getting this close to shuttering.

It’s a source of pride for the Swiss, and hence Swiss government won’t let it fail no matter how poorly it’s managed.

So true, I just wonder how will they package it for the voters.

There may be Swiss people proud of Swiss banking as an abstract concept, but I'd be surprised if much of that extended to Credit Suisse in particular as a concrete bank. Given that the overall economy is quite good, there might be a certain appetite even in business friendly circles to let a badly run bank fail pour encourager les autres, but its size would make such a failure fairly difficult to handle.

I don't think so. Maybe some banks but not CS and not UBS. In fact you may as well rename "Credit Suisse" to "Credit Saud" at this point.[1]

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/-just-another-cheque--...

In theory, there exist firm plans to do an orderly resolution that can result in a market exit should the bank not be able to survive: https://www.finma.ch/en/enforcement/recovery-and-resolution/...

In practice, it'll be interesting to see.

In theory, after the 2008 bailout, the Swiss people were promised that this would be the last time, and next time the bank(s) in question would be wound down.

I'm not super optimistic this actually is going to happen. On the other hand, in contrast to 2008, UBS, the other large bank, is not in crisis right now, so the argument that it's an enterprise rather than a sector problem is much stronger.

There will certainly be ramifications. Whether CS is "too big to fail" will determine the extent of those ramifications. TBTF generally means that a bank's failure is liable to bring down the entire economy. But any large bank, even if not strictly speaking TBTF, will cause plenty of pain if it fails, both for those who save/invest with it and those who rely on it for financing.

I can't imagine them being bailed out because they really aren't too big to fail.

A bank like Citi in 2008 really was too big to fail without imploding the entire system given the circumstance.

CS has been the worst IB in the industry for years. Really embarrassing for the Swiss.

Worked with them, know a bunch of people who worked there. Never heard anything positive. Absolutely every person I talk to thinks it's an awful institution.

many commenters say CS is too big to fail. I wonder if the Swiss government would do a referendum on this.

This article needs layoffs, is there a TLDR?

"The 80s are back, baby: bank loses all income, gets arrested for cocaine dealing, staff forced to choose between porsche and slip fees"

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