Director of Credit Suisse doc claims he faced pressure not to make it

Film director on Credit Suisse: 'Pressure not to do it' Keystone-SDA

Simon Helbling, director of the documentary Game Over - The Collapse of Credit Suisse, claims he was pressured not to make the film.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

“Clearly, sometimes in a very direct way,” said the 39-year-old in response to a question on the subject as part of an interview published on Wednesday by Le Temps. “But I felt a lot more pressure because of the responsibility that such a film entails: it’s crucial for Switzerland to talk about what happened.”

“What happened was not good for Switzerland or the people involved, but to make a film there was very rich material,” he said. “In the film we showed the strongest or most terrible stories. The series to be released later will deal with them in more depth, with the same narrative arc.”

+ Who’s to blame for the demise of Credit Suisse?

The documentary, which will have its Ticino premiere on Wednesday night at the Lux in Massagno and will be shown in various cinemas from Thursday, starts with the scandal at the Credito Svizzero branch in Chiasso in 1977. It then discusses the arrival of Rainer Gut at the head of the institution – later renamed Credit Suisse – and the launch of expansion into the US.

‘The bank lost so much money there in 20 years that it was one of the reasons for its demise,” Arthur Rutishauser, editor-in-chief of the SonntagsZeitung and investigative journalist who wrote the script for the film, observes in the interview.

+ Credit Suisse collapse: lingering questions one year on

“A year before the collapse, the investment bank could have been sold and the group could have held on, perhaps with the help of the National Bank,” Rutishauser says. “But to turn over a new leaf and lift the institution would have required action in 2015 or 2016, when Tidjane Thiam arrived. Moreover, the bank has been downsizing since 2012. The costs were too high compared to the activity, but the decision was never made to close certain divisions. The bank wanted to do everything but in smaller quantities and taking more risks, which was not the right strategy.”

According to Rutishauser, the report of the parliamentary commission of enquiry into the collapse of Switzerland’s second-largest banking group – later taken over in 2023 by rival UBS thanks to extensive state guarantees – brought to light many interesting facts but did not attribute any responsibility. “Conclusions are not needed,” he concludes.

Translated from Italian by DeepL/ts

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].