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The boom of Lugano and Chiasso banking

From eleven banks to forty-four

The banking sector that received the lira economy was small. At the end of the Second World War the canton had eleven banks with about five hundred employees.1 They included the Banca dello Stato, founded after the crash of 1914 (Chapter C.IV), the Banca della Svizzera Italiana, local savings and popular banks and the branches of the big Swiss banks that had arrived in Lugano before the First World War. The Banca della Svizzera Italiana, the oldest commercial bank in the canton, had a balance sheet of CHF 102 million in 1950, barely more than the CHF 88 million it had reported in 1914.2 The decades of war and crisis had left the Ticinese banks with a modest regional business in mortgages, savings and commercial credit. The turn came in the 1950s. Between 1956 and 1966 the funds collected by the banks in Ticino grew by 242 per cent, against 168 per cent for all Swiss banks together, a difference that contemporaries and later historians attributed to the inflow of Italian capital.3 A programme of the Swiss Italian television in January 1970 reported that within a decade the number of credit institutions in Ticino had risen from twelve to twenty, with an aggregate balance sheet that had grown from about CHF 800 million to almost CHF 3 billion.4 The balance sheet of the Banca dello Stato alone passed CHF 1 billion in 1971, when it reached CHF 1,060 million, an increase of 15.3 per cent over the previous year. Savings deposits at the State bank rose in that single year from about CHF 533 million to CHF 631 million.5 By 1982 the canton counted forty-four banking institutions with more than seven thousand employees.6 For comparison, the Federal Banking Commission supervised 487 banks in the whole of Switzerland at the end of 1977, of which 83 were foreign-controlled.7

These figures understate the size of the business. Much of the Italian money was not booked as deposits in Ticino at all. It was held in custody accounts as securities, placed in fiduciary deposits abroad in the name of the Swiss bank, kept in safe deposit boxes or booked at the head offices of the big banks in Zurich and Basel while the client relationship was managed in Lugano. The Ticinese balance sheets measured the visible part of a larger flow.8

Italian banks in Lugano

The most distinctive feature of the boom was the arrival of Italian capital as owner of banks. Several Italian banks and Italian financiers founded or acquired banks in Lugano, often with Ticinese partners and Swiss directors, to serve their Italian clients from Swiss soil. Berbenni lists the main institutions created with Italian capital in the two decades after the war.9 Bank Founded Italian connection (as described) Banco di Roma per la Svizzera 1947 Banco di Roma Cornèr Banca 1952 Italian founder Interchange Bank 1954 Italian capital Banca di Credito e Commercio 1954 Italian capital Banca del Gottardo 1957 later Banco Ambrosiano Banca del Ceresio 1958 Italian capital Banca del Sempione 1960 Italian capital Banca Prealpina 1963 Italian capital Banca Commerciale di Lugano 1963 Italian capital Banca Vallugano 1964 Italian capital

Two older institutions belonged to the same pattern. The Banca della Svizzera Italiana, founded in Lugano in 1873, was controlled by the Banca Commerciale Italiana, which held its stake from 1910 until it sold it to the Irving Trust Company in 1983, while the Banca Unione di Credito was linked to the Credito Italiano.10 Cornèr Banca was founded in Lugano in 1952 by Vittorio Cornaro and remains, under the same family, one of the city's independent banks.11 The Banca del Gottardo was founded in Lugano in 1957 with a capital of CHF 2 million. From 1963 it served as the Swiss arm of the Banco Ambrosiano, which held a stake of 45 per cent indirectly through its Luxembourg holding company, and under Roberto Calvi it became the hub of the Ambrosiano's offshore network. After the collapse of the Ambrosiano in 1982 it passed to the Japanese Sumitomo Bank, then in 1999 to the insurer Rentenanstalt (Swiss Life) and in 2008 to BSI, which absorbed it.12

The Italian banks had several reasons to open in Lugano. They could offer their domestic clients a Swiss account in their own group, managed in Italian by staff who knew the client's family and business. They could participate in the Euromarket and in international lending from a jurisdiction without Italian exchange controls. They could also hold, through the Swiss subsidiary, assets that the parent group preferred not to show in Italy. The supervisory consequences of this last function became visible in the Ambrosiano affair and are outside the scope of this chapter.13 For the Italian client the Italian-owned bank in Lugano combined two advantages that the Swiss big banks could not offer in the same way: a familiar institution and a Swiss address.

Notes

  1. Berbenni (as above), 329. ↩
  2. 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/ (balance sheet in thousand francs: 1914 88,254; 1950 102,224). ↩
  3. Berbenni (as above), 329, citing Pietro Nosetti, Un secolo di storia bancaria ticinese (Lugano 2020), 48–51, and Paolo Cornaro, Le banche ticinesi: premesse – vicende – realtà (Bellinzona: Casagrande 1969), 117 ff. ↩
  4. RSI, Prisma, "Banche in Ticino", 21 January 1970, as described in Biblioteca cantonale di Bellinzona, Banche in Ticino. Dossier tematico (May 2023), https://www2.sbt.ti.ch/dep/drt/4_banche_in_ticino.pdf (institutions "da 12 a 20"; balance sheet "da 800 mio ai quasi 3 miliardi"). The broadcast itself has not been viewed. ↩
  5. Gran Consiglio del Cantone Ticino, Rapporto della Commissione della gestione of 28 November 1972 on the accounts of the Banca dello Stato for 1971, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/POTERI/GC/allegati/rapporti/11066_1860 r.pdf (balance sheet "Fr. 1.059.647.199,63", +15.33 per cent; savings deposits from about 533 to 631 million). For 1969 (CHF 844 million) see the report of 17 September 1970, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/POTERI/GC/allegati/rapporti/14493_1663 r.pdf. ↩
  6. Berbenni (as above), 329. ↩
  7. Federal Banking Commission, Jahresbericht 1977 (as above), 6. ↩
  8. On the booking of Ticino-managed assets at head offices north of the Alps see René Chopard, Il sistema bancario ticinese e la piazza finanziaria svizzera: caratteristiche, evoluzioni, prospettive (Bellinzona: Meta-Edizioni 1992). ↩
  9. Berbenni (as above), 330–331. The table reproduces his list; the column on the Italian connection simplifies his description and should not be read as a statement on the shareholding of each bank at a given date. ↩
  10. Berbenni (as above), 330 (BSI "controlled by Comit"; Banca Unione di Credito linked to Credito Italiano). On the BSI see also 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 (BSI "founded in Lugano in 1873"; relationship recorded from 1 January 1910 to 5 January 1983; "BCI transferred its stake to the Irving Trust Co. in 1983"). ↩
  11. Wikipedia (Italian), "Cornèr Banca", https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornèr_Banca (founded 1952 by Vittorio Cornaro; seat and general management in Lugano). Used as a last resort. ↩
  12. Wikipedia (Italian), "Banca del Gottardo", https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banca_del_Gottardo (founded in Lugano in 1957 with a capital of CHF 2 million; acquired by Banco Ambrosiano in the 1970s; then Sumitomo; Rentenanstalt 1999; ceded to BSI 2008). Used as a last resort; Berbenni (as above), 330, associates the bank with the Banco Ambrosiano. The year 1963 and the stake of 45 per cent held "indirectly through the Banco Ambrosiano Holding S. A., Luxembourg" follow Wikipedia, "Banco Ambrosiano", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Ambrosiano, also used as a last resort; the Italian article dates the acquisition to the 1970s. ↩
  13. Wikipedia, "Banco Ambrosiano" (as above) (the Banca del Gottardo as "the linchpin of Calvi's offshore system", with branches in Nassau and Luxembourg in the 1970s). Used as a last resort; on the Ambrosiano affair see Chapter D.III. ↩

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.

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