Money from overseas: remittances and the Banca Svizzera Americana

Deposits from California

The emigration of the second half of the nineteenth century created a flow of money into the Sopraceneri that had no precedent in the canton's history. Tens of thousands of emigrants worked on the dairy ranches of California, saved part of their wages and sent money home to repay the debts incurred for their passage, to support parents, to buy land and to build houses. Returning emigrants brought savings with them. Others kept accounts at home while they worked abroad, planning to return. The emigrants came above all from the peasant population of the Sopraceneri, of whom Cheda estimates that about 30,000 left for California between 1850 and the Second World War. In the early 1850s the Vallemaggia alone lost more than 14 per cent of its population, with 846 departures for Australia and over 200 for California. Locarno, the geographic outlet of the valleys, became the hub of this emigrant economy, a role prepared by the emigration agencies that operated there during the years of the Austrian blockade.¹ Remittances reached the valleys above all by letter. An emigrant's letter quoted by Cheda tells the family that it contains a bill of exchange for 50 francs, which they could cash at the bank. Other money came home with returning relatives. Each transfer involved a conversion of dollars into francs and a cost that the emigrant had to bear.² A bank that could offer both ends of the transaction, an office in California where the emigrant deposited his savings and an office in Ticino where his family collected them, met an obvious demand.

Foundation and structure

The Banca Svizzera Americana was founded in Locarno on 12 November 1896 to provide that service. Its agency in San Francisco opened in 1897, so that the Associazione Bancaria Ticinese gives that year as the date of foundation.³ The bank was the creation of Ticinese emigrants who had prospered in California and of notables of Locarno. Nosetti names among its promoters Carlo Martinoia (1829–1905), who had become a landowner in California under the name of Charles Martin and held about 5,000 acres, and Antonio Tognazzini (1846–1906), whom the bank later described as one of the most ardent creators of the institution and one of the most prominent personalities of the Swiss colony in California. Its president from 1899 to 1907 was Luciano Balli, an engineer from Locarno-Muralto. Its director from 1898 to 1920 was Achille Gianella of Fiesso. The first director was Henry Brunner (1857–1921), a native of Aargau, who later chaired the delegates responsible for the San Francisco agency.⁴ The capital history of the bank shows both its growth and its difficulties. From 1897 to 1901 the share capital amounted to CHF 1.5 million, divided into 3,000 shares of 500 francs. It was doubled to CHF 3 million in 1902, reduced to CHF 2 million in 1909 and written down by 40 per cent in 1914. Between 1915 and 1919 it was reconstituted at CHF 3 million, now divided into 30,000 shares of 100 francs.⁵ Each change corresponds to an event in the bank's history: the expansion in California after 1902, the separation of the San Francisco business in 1909 and the losses of 1914.

Notes

1. Cheda, "Appunti per una storia dell'emigrazione ticinese oltremare" (as above); Cheda, "Economic crisis and fool's gold" (as above). Cheda, "Appunti", gives the figures for the Sopraceneri and the Vallemaggia and describes Locarno as the outlet of the valleys and the seat of the emigration agencies during the Austrian blockade. ↩
2. Cheda, "Appunti per una storia dell'emigrazione ticinese oltremare" (as above), quoting a letter of the emigrant Sciaroni on the enclosed bill of exchange (cambiale) of 50 francs to be cashed at the bank. The cost of conversion is the author's inference. ↩
3. Nosetti 2013 (as above); Associazione Bancaria Ticinese, "Cenni storici" (as above). ↩
4. Nosetti 2013 (as above). ↩
5. Nosetti 2013 (as above). ↩

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.