Credit Suisse's demise was sealed over a fateful weekend in March 2023. It was the culmination of a calamitous three years during which the bank had been embroiled in spying scandal on its own employees, lost $5.5bn from the collapse of family office Archegos Capital and was caught up with the disgraced supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital.

A November 2022 strategy update unveiled by chief executive Ulrich Koerner was meant to put the bank back on track. However, a broader crisis of confidence in the banking sector, spurred by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March, pushed Credit Suisse into a mess it could not escape from.