Sitting in a windowless conference room at the US Department of Labor in January 2015, Credit Suisse officials endured a day of public shaming.
It was not enough that the bank had pleaded guilty a year earlier to helping US clients evade taxes and paid $2.6bn in fines. A face-to-face chastising from liberal politicians was scheduled at an odd venue for global financiers.
Better known to Wall Street for publishing the monthly employment report, the DoL also regulates US retirement funds. And criminal charges, such as Credit Suisse’s, force asset managers to go hat-in-hand to the department to seek permission to continue managing US pension fund assets.