Lugano's bank: the Banca della Svizzera Italiana

Foundation in 1873

Lugano received its first bank of significance in 1873, when the Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI) opened in the town. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes its founders as a group of Ticinese personalities who worked together with three outside institutions: the Basler Bankverein, the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt of Zurich (in Italian, Credito Svizzero) and the Banca Generale of Rome. The purpose of the bank was to promote the economic growth of Ticino, in particular through the construction of the railway and support for tourism.¹ The historical archive of Intesa Sanpaolo, which holds the records of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, describes the same purpose in the language of the time: to give impetus to entrepreneurial initiatives and large public works.² The year of foundation was not accidental. In 1871 the Gotthardbahn- Gesellschaft had been constituted in Lucerne under Alfred Escher, and in 1872 work began on the tunnel. Chapter C.III describes how the treaties with Italy and Germany, the subsidies of the three states and the capital of the Swiss and German banks made the line possible. The BSI was the Ticinese counterpart of that enterprise, a bank founded to finance the economy that the railway was expected to create south of the Alps.

The composition of the founding group shows the three directions from which capital reached Lugano in the 1870s. Basel and Zurich supplied the experience and the funds of the new joint-stock banks of German-speaking Switzerland, which had grown with the railways of the 1850s and 1860s. Rome represented Italian capital, which saw in Lugano an outpost on the border with Lombardy and a channel to the Swiss market. The local founders supplied the knowledge of the territory and the political connections. From the beginning the BSI was therefore a regional bank with national and Italian partners, a structure that distinguished it from the Banca Cantonale Ticinese in Bellinzona and that explains its survival in 1914.

Growth with the Gotthard

The opening of the Gotthard line in 1882 transformed Lugano. The town became a station on the route from Germany and northern Switzerland to Milan and a destination for tourists from the north. Hotels, villas, funiculars and new quarters were built along the lake. The BSI financed part of this growth. When the contractors Bucher & Durrer of Kägiswil, who had acquired the concession for a funicular to the summit of Monte San Salvatore from the Lugano lawyer Antonio Battaglini, ran into financial difficulties during construction, the BSI under its director Giacomo Blankart bought shares in the company and saved the project. The contractors had undertaken to build the line for a lump sum of CHF 550,000 and to supply its electric power. Construction began on 24 July 1888 and regular service opened on 27 March 1890.³ The San Salvatore funicular was the first of a series of mountain railways around the lake. It shows the typical role of a regional bank in the tourist economy: a promoter obtained a federal concession, a contractor built the line and a local bank supplied or rescued the equity when costs exceeded the estimates.

The bank's balance sheet reflects its growth. In 1873 it stood at about CHF 7.6 million. By 1914 it had reached CHF 88.3 million, a large figure when set against the CHF 145.1 million that the Associazione Bancaria Ticinese gives as the combined balance sheet of the eight Ticinese banks in 1910.⁴ At the end of 1912 its share capital amounted to CHF 3 million, with reserves of CHF 950,000.⁵ The reserves were proportionally much higher than those of the other Ticinese banks, a sign of a more conservative dividend policy and a buffer that proved decisive in 1914.

Bank (seat) Founded Capital, end Reserves 1912 (CHF) (CHF) Banca Cantonale Ticinese 1858/1861 2 million 20,000 (Bellinzona) Banca della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano) 1873 3 million 950,000 Banca Popolare Ticinese (Bellinzona) 1885 n/a n/a Banca Popolare di Lugano (Lugano) 1889 4 million (2 500,000 paid) Credito Ticinese (Locarno) 1890 3 million 300,000 Banca Svizzera Americana (Locarno) 1896/1897 2 million 600,000 Società Bancaria Ticinese n/a 0.5 million none

Sources: foundation years from the Associazione Bancaria Ticinese and Nosetti, capital and reserves at the end of 1912 from Ernst Wetter (1914). Figures for the Banca Popolare Ticinese are illegible in the digitized copy.⁶

Notes

1. Gian Franco Pordenone, "Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI)", in DSS, version of 24 October 2019, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/041947/2019-10-24/. ↩
2. Intesa Sanpaolo, Historical Archives, "Lugano – Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI)", https://internationalhistory.intesasanpaolo.com/world-map/detail/IT-ISP-MAPPAESTERA-0000198/lugano-banca-della-svizzera-italiana-bsi. ↩
3. Funicolare Monte San Salvatore SA, Storia (2025), https://www.montesansalvatore.ch/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-FSS-prospetto-A5-Storia-ITA.pdf (concession request of 10 August 1885; approval by the Federal Assembly on 12 December 1885; lump sum of CHF 550,000; intervention of the BSI and its director Giacomo Blankart). ↩
4. Pordenone, "Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI)" (as above): balance sheet CHF 7,601,000 in 1873 and CHF 88,254,000 in 1914. Associazione Bancaria Ticinese, "Cenni storici" (as above), for the figure of 1910. The two figures refer to different years and are not strictly comparable. ↩
5. Ernst Wetter, Die Lokal- und Mittelbanken der Schweiz (Zurich: Orell Füssli 1914), 88, digitized at https://digi.econbiz.de/viewer/fullscreen/885200373/89/. ↩
6. Associazione Bancaria Ticinese, "Cenni storici", https://www.abti.ch/cenni-storici; Nosetti 2013 (as above); Wetter (as above), 88–89, https://digi.econbiz.de/viewer/fullscreen/885200373/90/. ABTI gives 1897 for the Banca Svizzera Americana, Nosetti 12 November 1896. ↩

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.