Geneva, Zug and Lugano compared

Three hubs of different size

The official figures place the three Swiss hubs in a clear order. In 2024 Geneva produced 58.4 per cent of the value added of Swiss commodity trading, Zug 27.0 per cent and Ticino 3.6 per cent, behind Vaud with 6.5 per cent and ahead of Zurich with 2.3 per cent.¹ In 2021 Geneva counted 325 trading firms with 4,471 employees, Zug 240 firms with 2,316 employees and Ticino 117 firms with 901 employees.² Lugano is therefore the third hub by number of firms, the fourth by employees after Vaud and the fourth by value added. Its share of firms is much larger than its share of value added, which confirms the picture of a cluster of many small firms with comparatively modest margins.

Indicator Geneva Zug Ticino Value added 2024 CHF 11.2 bn CHF 5.2 bn CHF 0.7 bn Share of Swiss value 58.4 % 27.0 % 3.6 % added Firms 2021 325 240 117 Employees 2021 4,471 2,316 901 Main products Oil, grains, softs Metals, Steel, metals, mining, energy energy Association SUISSENÉGOCE ZCA LCTA

Table 4. The three Swiss trading hubs. Sources: BFS 2023 and 2025; main products as described in the sources cited in the text.

The differences in specialization go back to the history of each hub. Geneva's trading community grew from the grain and cotton merchants who settled around Lake Geneva in the 1950s and from the oil traders who followed. The Lugano association's own account notes that 80 per cent of the world trade in cereals is handled by firms around the lake.³ Zug's community grew from the arrival of Philipp Brothers in 1956 and of Marc Rich's company in 1974, which later became Glencore, and remains dominated by metals and mining groups that combine trading with production.⁴ A brochure of the Zug economic promotion office of December 2021 counted about 200 trading companies with about 2,100 employees in Zug and noted that Glencore had been headquartered in the canton for more than 45 years.⁵ Lugano's community grew from Italian steel and coal traders in the 1980s and from the trading arms of Russian and Ukrainian steel producers after 1991, and remains dominated by steel and other metals.

What Lugano offers and what it lacks

Compared with Geneva and Zug, Lugano offers three distinctive advantages. The first is the Italian language and the proximity to Italy, the second largest manufacturing economy in the European Union and a large importer of steel, energy and raw materials. A trader whose customers are Italian steel processors, utilities or food manufacturers finds in Lugano staff, advisers and banks who speak their language and know their law. The second is cost. Office rents and salaries in Lugano are lower than in Geneva or Zug. The canton's labour market also includes a large pool of cross-border workers from Lombardy and Piedmont, whose situation Chapter H.I describes. The third is the density of the financial and fiduciary infrastructure built up by the banking centre, which allows small trading companies to buy services that a large house produces in-house.

Lugano's weaknesses are equally clear. Its trade finance capacity is limited and depends on banks headquartered elsewhere. Its share of large houses is small, so that the cluster lacks the training ground that the large Geneva houses provide for young traders. Its specialization in steel, a market with structural overcapacity and growing trade protection, exposes it to protectionism, as the debate about United States steel tariffs in 2018 already showed, when a Lugano trader argued that the tariffs could even redirect Asian and South American steel towards Europe and benefit Ticino suppliers of coal, scrap, pig iron and ferroalloys.⁶ Its concentration on Russian and Ukrainian trade before 2022 made it the hub most affected by the war. Its corporate tax rates, although reduced since the tax reform of 2020, are higher than those of Zug, which Chapter F.II compares in detail.

Notes

1. BFS press release of 18 November 2025 (above). ↩
2. BFS, Statistik der Rohstoffhändler (NMP) (above). ↩
3. Haller, "Transithandel" (above); RSI, 21 May 2021 (above); LCTA, "Lugano e il commodity trading" (above). ↩
4. Haller, "Transithandel" (above); Dejung, "Rohstoffhandel" (above) (Glencore emerged from the Marc Rich group). ↩
5. Canton of Zug, Economic Promotion, Zug Commodity Cluster (December 2021), https://economy.zg.ch/dam/jcr:16f93fd3-cdff-484a-aff3-9d15a8ef12d4/Zug %20Commodity_Cluster.pdf. ↩
6. RSI, "L'acciaio che pesa in Ticino", 10 March 2018 (above) (statement of Alessandro Fossati, Gamma Trade). ↩

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 August 2025.