Credit Suisse ‘Dream’ Client Luckin Coffee Becomes Nightmare (2)

Before the accounting scandal and the stock crash and the defaulted loans, Luckin Coffee Ltd.’s billionaire founder Lu Zhengyao was an ideal customer for Credit Suisse Group AG.

“I’ve had I don’t know how many dinners with him in Beijing and he’s absolutely the poster child for what we want to do,” Tidjane Thiam said at a conference last year when he was still head of the bank. He lauded Lu’s relationship with the firm that ranged from private banking to stock sales. “He’s a dream client.”

Lu Zhengyao

Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Luckin’s dramatic fall from grace this month blindsided some of the ...