The Société générale de surveillance

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The creation of the Société générale de surveillance was a decisive stage in the formation of the Geneva commodity-trading ecosystem. Founded in Rouen in 1878 to inspect grain cargoes, the company moved to Geneva in 1915 and there developed a worldwide business of inspection, verification, testing and certification.¹ The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs cites it among the companies that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, made Geneva one of the most important centres of international trade in goods.² It is today presented as the world leader in inspection.³

In commodity trading, inspection performs a function comparable to that of the public weighing scales and the inspectors of the medieval fairs, described in Part A: it guarantees that the goods delivered correspond to the goods sold, in quantity and in quality. This guarantee is indispensable when buyer and seller never meet and the goods travel thousands of kilometres. Inspection certificates are a condition for payment of cargoes, in particular under the documentary credits that banks grant to traders. The presence of the world’s leading inspection company therefore gave Geneva an infrastructure of trust that eased the arrival of the traders.

Notes

SGS, founded in Rouen in 1878 by Henri Goldstuck for the inspection of grain cargoes, head office transferred to Geneva in 1915, name Société Générale de Surveillance adopted in 1919; more than 99,000 employees and 2,700 laboratories and sites today; SGS, “Our History”, sgs.com (accessed September 2026). ↩
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, cited above. ↩
“Matières premières. Genève, plate-forme mondiale dans le négoce”, Le Temps, 16 February 2023. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.

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Dr Alexander Ressos, TEP

Rechtsanwalt/Attorney-at-Law

I am a Swiss attorney-at-law and also admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong and in England & Wales, with almost 25 years of experience.

Together with my multilingual team, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian and French native speakers, I advise companies and their owners from around the world on the full range of banking, corporate, commercial and tax law matters in Switzerland, including international tax planning, fiduciary services, and legal family office services including immigration & relocation or real estate investments. My practice has a particular focus on clients from growth and frontier markets in Greater China, Central Asia and the Caucasus, the rest of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and I equally advise clients from Europe and North America. Through an affiliated Swiss trust company, we also take care of the incorporation and ongoing administration of their companies and other structures, including accounting, tax returns and corporate secretarial services, and I serve as a professional director where required. With the support of a network of first-class cooperation partners, I also implement solutions worldwide.

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The Société générale de surveillance

Notes

Setting up or expanding in Switzerland?