The firm will not be the last to come under pressure as economies wilt
As interest rates rise and asset prices slump, investors are scrambling to identify the weakest links in the global financial system. Every bear market produces national and corporate victims who get skewered. In the 1997-98 rout Thailand’s economy imploded, as did ltcm, a hedge fund. Iceland and Lehman Brothers were victims in the 2008-09 slump.
Today one country has already been picked off: Britain, where the currency has fallen and the central bank has had to intervene in the bond market to bail out the pension system, whose overseers had foolishly made vast bets on continued low volatility. Now some believe an institutional victim of the great 2022 sell-off in markets has been spotted: Credit Suisse, a venerable Swiss firm that spans wealth-and-asset management, private banking and investment banking.
The Economist