Credit Suisse may face CRIMINAL charges

I don't think this is the main reason people are starting to go into tech/IT and the buy side versus IB. we live in a litigious society, no one industry is immune, but IB gets the most attention because it's the easiest to pick on (most of the media is against "wall street," so you get better ratings by focusing on this instead of Apple trying to sue Samsung out of $2bn).

the CS issue is purely because we've come at a crossroads with swiss bank secrecy laws. the US law is clear that citizens must disclose offshore assets to remain tax compliant, where as the swiss law is clear that you can't release client information without consent (I'm paraphrasing, I'm not an attorney), so who has jurisdiction? the US cannot close a swiss bank, but they can ban them from activity in the US, and since CS or any other foreign bank closing US operations would be a huge shock to the system, my guess is that if this doesn't get dropped altogether, it will set a precedent, but probably without jailtime.

the BNP issue is because of dealings with countries on our OFAC list. all banks & brokerages maintain lists of countries with whom they cannot do business (Iraq) or with whom you can do business if given approval (Cayman Islands), and since BNP is a French bank and OFAC is a strictly US thing, the jurisdiction is confusing. unfortunately, I don't know of any rules on cross-border banking regulations. again, this is not a US bank (even though they have US operations), so in my opinion it's a question of jurisdiction. I will be very curious to see how this all shakes out.