A senior Credit Suisse investment banker has been removed from his position after he used unapproved messaging applications with clients. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/Getty ImagesA senior Credit Suisse investment banker was removed from his position earlier this year after he was found to have used unapproved messaging applications with clients, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Credit Suisse decided to remove Mr Kontoleon from his role after an audit of several dozen of its bankers found that he had used personal messaging applications to communicate with clients, the people added. The audit did not find that Mr Kontoleon had shared any inappropriate information. Mr Kontoleon’s exit follows a string of scandals at Credit Suisse in the past two years, including a $5.5 billion trading loss from lending to family office Archegos Capital Management and the bank’s recommendation that clients invest in funds tied to Greensill Capital, a supply chain finance company that later collapsed.
JPMorgan Chase in December agreed to pay $200 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for failing to keep records of staff communications on personal devices, in an action that spooked many Wall Street banks. Following the JPMorgan fine, other lenders including HSBC and Goldman Sachs disclosed that US regulators were looking into whether their bankers improperly used personal messaging apps to do business.