Template:Roll of honour
| Scandal | Date | Where | Loss | Reason | Firings | Jail-Time? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit Suisse | Switzerland | Gradual decline into entropy with a 92% decline in share price since 2015. | Hubris, widespread incompetence, stupidity, spying, uselessness. | Billions and billions over a series of avoidable cockups. | Like the old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead. I think I’m going for a walk. I feel happy.” Market (to SNB): “Isn’t there anything you can do?” | It is not, yet, a crime to make a series of howling cockups[1] over a credulity-defying period any more than it is a crime to not read an AT1 prospectus. Reputations damaged for ever, but alas no porridge, however richly deserved it may seem. |
| Silicon Valley Bank memeplex | 2023 | US | $80bn or more | Dopey bank management, regulator asleep at switch, Peter Thiel panicking | Bank insolvent. Bondholders and shareholders wiped out. Other banks levied. Triggered other moral panics such as First National, Signature bank and others (poor old lucky Credit Suisse) | None yet. Lots of arguments about the presence or absence of moral hazard. Moral panic more like. |
| Frank | 2023 | US | $175m | Fraud, unfeasible gullibility | Javice got fired. Surely more to come | Not yet clear |
| FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried | 2022 | US, Bahamas | $32bn (so far) so some claims that everything has now been recovered and returned to its rightful owner | Hubris, stupidity, fraud | Fired: Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, SBF. Bankruptcies: Alameda, Genesis, Blockfi. Suspensions of trading: Gemini Reported Losses: Crypto.com, Tiger Global Management, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, SoftBank Group, BlackRock, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Temasek, and Sequoia Capital reported losses of $1bn |
Charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., violation of campaign finance laws. |
| Barclays MTN Programme Limit | 2022 | US | £1.3bn | Internal Operations | None reported but you have to fear for those poor folk in ops. I beg your pardon? What poor folk in ops? Oh, Right. | No |
| LME Nickel short squeeze | 2022 | London | “Billions” | LME | None reported ... yet | No |
| Evergrande | 2021 | China | $300bn | Who knows? | No | |
| Archegos | 2021 | US | $10bn+ | UMR Internal operations |
100+ across brokers plus several senior executives and one CEO | Eyes peeled, Mr Huang |
| Greensill | 2021 | UK | $4.6bn | |||
| Melvin Capital Management LP | 2021 | US | $7bn | Hubris detector failed | Everyone! The fund shut down shortlay after | Talk of regulators, outrageously, going after the outsider traders, but nothing as yet. |
| Citigroup v Brigade | 2021 | US | $500m | Outsourcing, Operations, IT | Not reported but wouldn’t fancy being head of the team in Bangalore | No |
| Nikola | 2020 | US | About 80% share drop | CEO misrep | Must have been plenty | CEO indicted on charges of securities fraud |
| Wirecard | 2020 | Germany | $4bn | CEO misrep | All of them | Three charged with fraud including CEO |
| WeWork | 2019 | US | $11bn over three years | CEO yogababble | Nothing to see here folks! Got a new venture to start up | Jail? Dude hasn’t even been kicked off Marc Andreesen’s Xmas Card list. |
| Carillion | 2018 | UK | £7bn | Auditors | 3,000 jobs | No but litigation a-plenty |
| Patisserie Valerie | 2018 | UK | ||||
| Abraaj | 2017 | Saudi | ||||
| Fyre festival | 2017 | US | ||||
| Mozambique tuna bonds | 2012-2016 | Mozambique, Russia and Switzerland | £1.5-2bn Credit Suisse fined £350m and required to forgive its loans ouch | Fraud, corruption, money laundering | Plenty, including three Credit Suisse bankers and the minister in Mozambique | Three Credit Suisse bankers done on money laundering charges |
| 1MDB | 2016 | Malaysia, but tentacles stretching all over the world: USA, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, China | Somewhere between $4.5bn and $8bn | Colossal fraud, corruption, money laundering and hip-hop | Hell yeah. Prime Ministers, Goldman Sachs Partners, and one dude — Jho Low — on the lam in rural china | You betcha: Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Luxembourg, Seychelles, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, UK and US are all actively pursuing action. The two Goldman partners pled or were found guilty; one sentenced to 10 years, one awaiting sentencing. Malaysian PM and wife convicted and sentenced to 10+ years with money laundering. If anyone catches Jho Low he’s for the high jump too. |
| Mossack Fonseca | 2016 | Panama | ||||
| Theranos | 2016 | US | ||||
| Wells Fargo accounts fraud | 2016 | US | ||||
| Volkswagen emissions | 2015 | Germany and US | ||||
| Autonomy | 2012 | UK and US | ||||
| Olympus | 2012 | |||||
| LIBOR | 2012 | UK | ||||
| London Whale | 2012 | UK | ||||
| Kweku Abodoli | 2011 | UK | ||||
| Jérôme Kerviel | 2008 | UK | ||||
| Bernie Madoff | 2008 | US | ||||
| Amaranth | 2007 | US | ||||
| Tyco | 2002 | US | ||||
| Parmalat | 2003 | Italy | ||||
| Freddie Mac | 2003 | US | ||||
| Global Crossing | 2002 | US | ||||
| WorldCom | 2002 | US | ||||
| Enron | 2001 | US | ||||
| LTCM | 1998 | US | $3.6 bn bailout orchestrated by the Fed | Black-Scholes option pricing model attacked them from nowhere | Everyone out of a job, Master of the Universe-sized reputations (John Meriwether, Myron Scholes, Robert C. Merton) cut to ribbons | No, though fourteen bank CEOs were locked in a room by the Federal Reserve for a weekend so that is something. |
| Yasuo Hamanaka | 1996 | UK | ||||
| Savings and Loan | 1995 | US | ||||
| Nick Leeson | 1992 | UK Singapore |
- ↑ except where the individual cockups were themselves criminal of course