First the ski hat, then Roger Federer: How Credit Suisse became the most important sports sponsor
At the beginning and at the end there is a scandal. In between are 46 years in which Credit Suisse was omnipresent in Swiss sport.
Roger Federer (left) and the then CEO of Credit Suisse, Brady Dougan, decide on a long-term partnership in 2009.
What an irony of history: The most successful sponsorship liaison in Swiss sports history began in 1977 with a scandal. It ended in an even bigger scandal 46 years later with the collapse of Credit Suisse in March 2023. The trigger was the “Chiasso scandal”. Explained in a somewhat simplified way: The branch of the “Schweizerische Kreditanstalt” (later Credit Suisse) illegally stashes 2.2 billion tax evasion funds from Italy in a mailbox company in Liechtenstein, which grants bad loans and ultimately gives the bank a loss of 1.4 billion. A polemic about business, morality and oversized big banks follows. The Kreditanstalt share falls by 19 percent. But the “bank run” doesn’t happen. The bank saved itself on its own.
