August 29, 2019: At UBS, High Expectations
With Khan's defection to UBS – Credit Suisse's biggest rival – the thin ties between Thiam and Khan are severed definitively. The move is without precedent in recent wealth management history.
Wealth managers and top executives normally have to sit out months-long notice periods, or are threatened with «bad leaver» status. Khan is held to neither, indicating he held considerable leverage during his Credit Suisse exit negotiations.
23. September 2019: Iqbal Khan Tailed by Credit Suisse / Bank Begins Probe
Credit Suisse's deep mistrust of Khan, its former «star» banker, is laid bare in a private surveillance operation – which is bumbled when Khan confronts a private detective he believes to be shadowing him.
The confrontation, on a side street near to Credit Suisse's Paradeplatz headquarters, forces the «spygate» affair into the open. Khan files a police report against the private detective for alleged coercion.
01. Oktober 2019: Tidjane Thiam: No Knowledge
What starts as a bungled, Keystone Cops-style episode ends in tragedy: a security middleman between the private detective and Credit Suisse dies by suicide, reportedly after his name is leaked to a journalist investigating the scandal.
In parallel, Credit Suisse orders an outside investigation which finds that Thiam didn't know Khan was covertly being shadowed. The findings are met with disbelief, even by bankers sympathetic to Credit Suisse.
Pierre-Olivier Bouée, Credit Suisse's operating chief for the past four years, takes sole responsibility for the surveillance. After more than 20 years alongside Thiam, first at consulting firm McKinsey, then insurers Aviva and Prudential, and finally at Credit Suisse, Bouée resigns.
