The Banks' Nuclear Secrets

The instant Asia's economies cracked last year, Howard Greenspan feared the worst for his bank. As a longtime customer and investor in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the second largest in Canada, Greenspan knew it was a big player in the Asian derivatives market. The bank would suffer from the Asian fallout, but how much? At the company's annual meeting in January, Greenspan, a Toronto management consultant, asked CIBC chairman Al Flood about the bank's derivatives. But Flood cut him off, and a subsequent attempt was unavailing. So Greenspan took CIBC to court a month later to compel the bank...