For all its past mishaps I never would have imagined CS actually going down, or being allowed to go down in such a manner. The same discourse was being applied to Deutsche as recently as last year, if I'm not mistaken, hence my curiosity.
I'm not all that surprised. CS didn't make one mistake, not even one really big mistake; it was involved in scandal after misstep after scandal after embarrassment, for a decade. It takes a lot to bring down an institution this old and big, but the CS management (mostly former) had what it took.
I think part of why the Swiss gov't wanted to do it this way, is that it was clear CS was going to continue to be a problem, if it was rescued in a way that kept it an independent bank. Not that the current top mgmt is really responsible for its current state, but there had to be a fair amount of institutional/cultural issues, for that many problems to hit the same bank, year after year.
