Geneva

Commodities, private banking and diplomacy

Geneva is the most international of the Swiss financial centres and the world's leading hub for commodity trading. Of the Swiss value added in commodity trading of CHF 19.2 billion in 2024, 58.4 per cent was generated in Geneva, and the trading houses there buy and sell oil, gas, grains, sugar, coffee and metals from Africa, Latin America and Central Asia and finance them through the banks that specialise in trade finance. Geneva is also one of the oldest centres of private banking, with family-owned banks that have managed international wealth for more than two centuries, and it hosts the European headquarters of the United Nations and many international organisations.

A seat for trading desks

For a company from Asia, the Middle East or Africa, Geneva is the natural location for a trading desk with its own traders, operations staff and risk control, because the talent, the trade finance lines, the inspection and shipping companies and the counterparties are already there. The link to the French-speaking commodity corridors of West and Central Africa is closer than anywhere else in Switzerland, and the city's airport connects it with the Gulf, Africa and the major European hubs.

Language, tax and arbitration

The authorities, the commercial register and the courts work in French, and English is the language of the trading floor. The effective profit tax is 14.70 per cent in 2026, lower than in Zurich and higher than in Zug, and lump-sum taxation remains available to wealthy foreign residents who do not work in Switzerland. Geneva has been a seat of international arbitration since the nineteenth century, and commodity disputes are regularly decided there. The articles below follow the city's history into the present: banking secrecy and its statutory core, the automatic exchange of information, the restitution of retrocessions, the attachment of assets, the reporting duty of a trading house, and the seat of arbitration.