The complete text of Dr Alexander Ressos’s study of Lugano and Ticino as Switzerland’s third financial centre — from the Lombard lakes and passes, Reformation exile and the Gotthard to Italian flight capital, private banking, commodity trading, Plan ₿, the Italian language and the outlook to 2035 — published here chapter by chapter.
The complete text of Dr Alexander Ressos’s study of Lugano and Ticino as Switzerland’s third financial centre — from the Lombard lakes and passes, Reformation exile and the Gotthard to Italian flight capital, private banking, commodity trading, Plan ₿, the Italian language and the outlook to 2035 — published here chapter by chapter.
Each section of the book appears here as a separate article, with its footnotes, in the order of the book. The articles can be read on their own; the part pages collect the chapters of each part.
Preface
This book is the companion to my volume on Geneva as an international financial centre. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBetween Como and the Gotthard: Land, Lakes and Lordship to 1500 — overview and summary
A financial centre is usually explained by its institutions: banks, courts, a stable currency, a statute on professional secrecy. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe lie of the land: two Ticinos, two lakes and a ring of passes
The Canton of Ticino covers about 2,812 square kilometres, which places it fifth among the Swiss cantons by area. Its internal division follows the relief. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonValleys and passes
North of the Ceneri the land rises quickly. The Leventina, the valley of the Ticino river, leads up to the Gotthard pass at 2,106 metres. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLepontii, Rome and the first roads
The earliest inhabitants of the region who can be named are the Lepontii, a people whom Greek and Roman authors placed in the high valleys around the sources of the Rhine and the Rhône and on the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonSettlements, villas and roads
Roman settlement is best attested along the lakes and in the Mendrisiotto. A vicus at Muralto, on the shore of Lake Maggiore next to the later Locarno, has yielded remains of buildings, cemeteries… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLombards, Franks and the two churches
The Lombards entered Italy in 568 and within a few years controlled the Po plain and the Alpine approaches to it. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCarolingian counties and the power of the bishops
After Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774 the territory was organized in Carolingian counties. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCommunes, valley communities and vicinanze
The basic unit of local life in the medieval Ticino was the vicinanza or vicinia, the association of the heads of household of a village who held rights in common land, woods, pastures and water. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTowns, borghi and the notariat
The larger places of the territory were borghi, market settlements with walls or at least a legal status distinct from the surrounding villages. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonComo against Milan: the communal age
From the late eleventh century the cities of Lombardy emancipated themselves from their bishops and counts and became self-governing communes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVisconti and Sforza: the territory in the Milanese state
The Visconti built the largest territorial state of northern Italy in the fourteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonAdministration and justice
The Visconti and Sforza administered their territory through a hierarchy of officials. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Milanese economy as hinterland
The duchy that governed the Ticinese territories was one of the most productive economies of fifteenth-century Europe. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe opening of the Gotthard and the valley economy
The Gotthard is the most direct crossing of the central Alps between the upper Rhine and Milan, yet it was the last of the major passes to be used for regular traffic. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonIncome, tolls and debt
The income that the route brought to the valleys took several forms. There were the carriers' fees, the charges of innkeepers and stable-keepers, the sale of hay and provisions to travellers and the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona: castles, customs and the Confederate advance
Bellinzona occupies the point at which the valleys of the Ticino and the Moesa meet and the valley floor narrows between steep mountain slopes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona as customs station
The toll of Bellinzona was one of the richest revenues of the Milanese north. It was levied on goods in both directions: textiles, metal wares and horses coming south, grain, rice, wine, salt, silk… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMarket towns and the lake trade
Medieval Lugano was a borgo with a harbour, a market square, the collegiate church of San Lorenzo above the town and a castle that changed hands with each change of lordship. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona and Mendrisio
Bellinzona combined its military and fiscal role with a substantial market. The garrison, the ducal officials, the toll collectors and the merchants who waited for the clearance of their goods… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMoney, measures and credit
The monetary system of the medieval Ticino was the system of Milan, itself a local variant of the Carolingian order. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonUnits of account in daily practice
For the inhabitants of the Ticinese districts the practical consequence of this system was a permanent gap between the money in which obligations were expressed and the coins with which they were… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCredit in a notarial society
The sources allow a fairly detailed picture of credit in the late medieval Ticino, because almost every loan of any size was recorded by a notary. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA borderland economy: lines to the modern financial centre
The medieval history of the Ticinese territories can be read as a prehistory of the modern financial centre, provided that the lines are drawn with care. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCurrencies and units of account
The second line concerns money. For almost a thousand years the inhabitants of the territory kept accounts in Milanese lire while paying with coins of varying origin and value, and for three… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe economy of the border
The fourth line is the economy of the border itself. In the Middle Ages the difference between jurisdictions was exploited through tolls, privileges and exemptions. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Transalpine Bailiwicks: Confederate Rule, Justice and Public Finance, 1403-1798 — overview and summary
For almost three centuries the territory of today's Canton of Ticino was governed as a set of subject lands. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom Milanese valleys to Confederate bailiwicks, 1403–1516
The Confederate conquest of the south was neither planned nor linear. It advanced in three waves, each triggered by a crisis of Milanese power and each exposed to reversal. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBellinzona, the Riviera and Blenio, 1495–1503
The second wave followed the collapse of the Sforza state. In 1499 King Louis XII of France conquered the Duchy of Milan. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe rulers, the titles and the dates
The following table summarizes the eight bailiwicks, the cantons that ruled them and the dates of acquisition and loss. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA constitution of co-owners: the common lordships and their rulers
The Italian bailiwicks were governed under a legal model that has no exact modern equivalent. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonConfession and the balance of the ruling cantons
The Reformation split the ruling cantons. Zurich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen adopted the Reformed faith, Glarus became confessionally mixed, and Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe landfogto: office, income and the purchase of power
The central figure of Confederate government in the south was the landfogto (in German Landvogt, in the Italian documents also balivo, commissario or capitano ), the governor appointed by one of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonPurchasing the office
In the Landsgemeinde cantons, election to a bailiwick was frequently bought. In the seventeenth century the rural cantons ( Länderorte) turned the purchase into an institution, the so-called… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe sindacato: audit, appeal and the limits of accountability
The sindacato (in German Syndikat) was the annual meeting of the delegates of the ruling cantons in the bailiwicks. Its members, the sindacatori ( Syndikatoren ), were one envoy for each co-owner. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonProcedure and timetable
The procedure of the sindacato combined elements of an audit, a court session and a diplomatic conference. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCourts, criminal justice and the revenue of punishment
Justice was the most important public service that the ruling cantons provided in the bailiwicks and the most important source of the income of their governors. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFines, confiscation and composizione
The penalties imposed by the courts were fines, corporal punishment, banishment, galley service and death. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWitch trials in the valleys
The most extreme expression of the inquisitorial system in the bailiwicks were the witch trials. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonStatutes, privileges and communal self-government
The reverse side of distant and venal lordship was a high degree of local autonomy. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom vicinanze to patriziati
The vicinanze survived the end of Confederate rule in a transformed shape. The modern municipality goes back to the Helvetic Republic of 1798, whose legislation separated the political municipality (… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTaxes, tithes and the public finances of the bailiwicks
The fiscal regime of the Italian bailiwicks was layered. The ruling cantons collected regalian income and a share of the revenue of justice, but they levied few regular direct taxes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWhat the communities levied
The main tax authorities in the bailiwicks were the communities. To pay for local needs (roads, bridges, dykes against the floods of the Ticino and the Maggia, churches, schools where they existed,… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCommunal debt and the credit market
Communities borrowed regularly, to finance extraordinary expenses such as the rebuilding of churches, the repair of flood damage, the purchase of grain in years of scarcity or the settlement of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe grain question: food security as a problem of foreign policy
The bailiwicks could not feed themselves. The valleys of the Sopraceneri produced rye, millet, chestnuts, cheese and livestock, and the hills of the Bellinzonese, the Locarnese and the Luganese and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFamine, plague and emigration
The early modern period brought repeated crises of subsistence. The harvest failures of the 1590s, the plague of 1629 and 1630, which struck Lombardy and the southern bailiwicks and in the bailiwick… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRevolt, critique and the end of subjection, 1755–1798
Confederate rule in the south was remarkably stable for more than two centuries. There were petitions, local conflicts and occasional violence, but no general uprising against the ruling cantons… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe spring of 1798
In 1796 and 1797 Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy created the Cisalpine Republic, constituted on 29 June 1797, which absorbed the former Duchy of Milan and, later in 1797, the Valtellina, Bormio and… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom landfogto to FINMA: governance lessons for the modern financial centre
A financial centre sells trust in institutions. Clients who deposit assets in Lugano, trading houses that structure their contracts under Swiss law and families that plan their succession through… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonIndependent courts established by law
The landfogto was a political appointee who held judicial power for two years and returned to his canton's politics afterwards. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLegality and predictability of taxation
The fiscal paradox of the bailiwicks, light taxes combined with unpredictable charges, is the negative image of the modern principle of legality in tax law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMemory, trust and the political culture of the canton
The history of the bailiwicks survives in the political culture of Ticino. The feeling of being governed from the north by authorities that do not understand the south, the insistence on the equal… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMasters Abroad: Emigrant Builders, Artists and the Economy of Remittances — overview and summary
Among the regions that supplied early modern Europe with its builders, the shores of the lakes of Lugano and Como occupy a place out of all proportion to their size. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLakes, valleys and the necessity of leaving
The territory described in Chapter A.I was poor in everything except water, stone and people. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBorders that did not coincide with the trades
The region that exported builders did not coincide with the political frontiers that were drawn across it between 1512 and the nineteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA society of absent men
The social consequences at home were considerable. Contemporary observers and later historians describe villages in which, for much of the year, the adult male population was largely absent. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the magistri commacini to the Solari: the long medieval line
The earliest written trace of builders associated with the lake region is found in Lombard law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe magistri Antelami in Genoa
A second early network ran from the Val d'Intelvi to Genoa. In Genoese documents from the twelfth century onwards the term magistri Antelami denotes building masters. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRome: Fontana, Maderno, Borromini and the Lombard nation
No single market mattered more to the lake masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than papal Rome. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe contractor-architect and his accounts
Fontana's career illustrates a feature of the building trades that matters for the economic argument of this chapter. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrancesco Borromini
Francesco Castelli, who later took the name Borromini, was born in Bissone in September 1599, the son of Giovanni Domenico Castelli, a builder of whom little is known, and of Anastasia Garovo. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGenoa, Venice, Turin and Naples: the Italian courts and republics
Genoa offered the lake masters a market that combined public works, a rich merchant aristocracy and a long-established community of builders from the Val d'Intelvi. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTurin and the Savoy court
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the court of the dukes of Savoy, from 1713 kings of Sicily and from 1720 of Sardinia, rebuilt Turin as a capital, with new quarters, churches and a ring of… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonNorth of the Alps and to the East: Central Europe and Russia
The second great market for the lake masters opened north of the Alps after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Thirty Years' War had destroyed towns, churches and monasteries across the Empire. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonSalzburg, Bavaria and Swabia
In Salzburg the new cathedral was built between 1614 and 1628 to designs by Santino Solari, a master from the lake region whom Archbishop Markus Sittikus had appointed chief architect in 1612. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGilardi, Adamini, Rusca and the Russian nineteenth century
The Russian market for Ticinese masters reached its peak between the late eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe humbler emigration: chimney-sweeps, chestnut- roasters and waiters
The largest group of emigrants from the Sopraceneri left no buildings behind. They were the chimney-sweeps ( spazzacamini) of the Verzasca, the Centovalli and the Onsernone, who worked every winter… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonChestnut-roasters, confectioners and café-keepers
The Val di Blenio developed a different specialization. Its men went to Milan and other cities of northern Italy as chestnut-roasters ( caldarrostai or marronai ), selling roasted chestnuts from… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom seasonal emigration to the Americas
In the middle of the nineteenth century the pattern changed. Rising population, crop failures and the decline of some traditional trades pushed emigrants from the Sopraceneri to more distant… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWorkshops, contracts, confraternities and notaries: how emigration was organized
The basic unit of the building emigration was the family workshop. A master took his sons, nephews and sons-in-law with him, trained them on the building site and, as they grew older, gave them… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonGuilds, privileges and competition with local masters
Foreign masters were not always welcome. In many cities of the Empire the local guilds of masons and plasterers held monopolies and regarded the Italian teams as competitors. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe notary as the backbone of the system
At home the notary was indispensable. The Ticinese territories, like Lombardy, belonged to the world of the Latin notariate, in which a public notary drew up authentic instruments that were preserved… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBringing the money home: cash, bills of exchange and couriers
The simplest way to bring earnings home was to carry them. A stucco-worker returning from Bavaria in November, or a chimney-sweep coming back from Milan in spring, carried his savings in coin, sewn… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMerchants, carriers and fellow villagers
Between the extremes of carrying coins and buying bills there was a range of intermediate arrangements. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonChurches, chapels and altars
A large part of emigrant money went into the church. The parish churches and sanctuaries of the lake villages were rebuilt, enlarged and decorated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, often… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVillage capital: land, credit, inheritance and the absent member
The emigrant never ceased to belong to his village. Membership of the vicinanza, the corporation of the old-established families that owned the common pastures, forests and alpine meadows, was… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonVillage credit and the returning master as lender
Money not invested in land was often lent to neighbours. The returning master with savings became a creditor in his village, lending to families who needed to buy grain, pay a dowry or cover the… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the masters abroad to the modern private client
The economy described in this chapter rested on an asset that did not appear in any balance sheet: the skill, reputation and networks of the emigrant masters. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the undivided family to modern family governance
The undivided family community, in which brothers abroad left their shares under the management of a relative at home, survives in the Swiss Civil Code as the indivisione or Gemeinderschaft (Art. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRemittances and the modern law of payments
Remittances remain an economic reality in Switzerland, although the direction of the flow has reversed. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTrust, reputation and the private-client relationship
The emigrant economy of the lakes depended on trust between families and their intermediaries. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTransit, Tolls and Contraband: The Gotthard Route and the Milanese Market — overview and summary
The previous chapters followed the land, the lordships and the people of the lakes and valleys south of the Alps. This chapter follows the goods. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe making of the route, c. 1200–1500
The Gotthard massif lies at the centre of the Alpine arc, where the watersheds of the Reuss, the Ticino, the Rhône and the Rhine meet close to it. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonA pass with a patron saint
Two further pieces of evidence point to the same period. At the summit a chapel was dedicated to St Gotthard, the Bishop of Hildesheim who had been canonized in 1131. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonUri, Urseren and the politics of the road
The Confederacy grew along the Gotthard road. Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden formed their alliance in the late thirteenth century, and Lucerne joined in 1332. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCarriers and corporations: carrying rights, Susten and the vicinanze
Until the carriage road was completed in 1830, almost everything that crossed the Gotthard travelled on the backs of animals. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe vicinanze and degagne of the Leventina as transport cooperatives
South of the pass the same functions were performed by the rural communes of the Leventina. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonLiability for the load
The carriers' statutes allocated the risk of loss. As a general rule, a carrier who received goods at a Sust was liable for their safe delivery at the next Sust unless the loss was caused by force… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe price of passage: tolls and the dazio
A merchant who sent a bale of cloth from Basel to Milan in 1500 paid for the passage many times. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe dazio of the Leventina and the Dazio Grande
South of the pass Uri inherited the tolls that the cathedral chapter of Milan and the dukes had levied in the Leventina. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTariffs, exemptions and the incentive to evade
The dazio of the bailiwicks was levied on imports, exports and transit, with different rates for different goods and many exemptions. Goods of the ruling cantons often enjoyed reduced rates. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonWhat crossed the pass: grain, salt, rice, livestock, cheese, wine and cloth
The goods that moved between Lombardy and the Confederacy fall into two groups. Long-distance transit goods travelled the whole route between the Rhine and Milan or beyond: textiles, silk, spices,… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRice and wine
Rice cultivation, which had come to Italy by way of Sicily, spread to the Po valley in the fifteenth century. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonCloth, silk, metalwork and the long-distance trade
The long-distance trade was dominated by textiles. From the north came linen from Constance and St Gallen, woollen cloth from Flanders, England and southern Germany, and fustians and later cottons. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonTreaties with Milan: from the capitoli to the Capitolato of 1639
The trade between the Confederates and Milan rested on a series of treaties that the German-language literature calls the Mailänder Kapitulate and the Italian literature the capitoli or capitolati di… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Capitolato di Milano of 1639
The treaty that is most often called the Capitolato di Milano was concluded by Spain with the Three Leagues of the Grisons on 3 September 1639. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe legal character of the capitulations
The capitulations were treaties between sovereigns, but their purpose was to confer rights on private persons: merchants, carriers, drovers and consumers. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonMarkets and fairs: Bellinzona, Lugano, Locarno and the Lombard towns
The transit road connected a chain of market towns, each of which had its own weekly market and one or more annual fairs. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe Lombard markets across the border
For the population of the bailiwicks the markets on the Lombard side of the border were as important as their own. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonContraband as a structural economy of the border
Smuggling on the southern border of the Confederacy was a permanent consequence of the legal and fiscal order described in the preceding sections. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonRoutes, techniques and people
The smugglers used the paths across the hills of the Mendrisiotto and the Malcantone, the passes of the Val Colla and the Monte Generoso, and above all the lakes. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonContraband and the modern criminal law
The modern law draws a sharp line that the old regime did not. Under the Customs Act, the evasion of customs duties and the import, export or transit of goods in breach of prohibitions or… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonBrokers, forwarders and the instruments of credit
Every market and every Sust on the Gotthard route had its brokers. The Italian term was sensale, the German Makler or Unterkäufer. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe bill of exchange and the exchange fairs
The long-distance trade was settled by bills of exchange. A bill of exchange ( lettera di cambio) was an order in writing by which a person (the drawer) instructed another person (the drawee),… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom transit trade to trade finance: Chiasso, customs law and modern logistics
The transit economy described in this chapter ended in three steps. The revolution of 1798 and the Helvetic Republic abolished the bailiwicks and many of the privileges on which the carriers'… Read more Lugano · Before the CantonThe modern dazio: customs law and transit procedures
Today the import, export and transit of goods through Ticino are governed by federal law. Read more Lugano · Before the CantonFrom the bill of exchange to the documentary credit
The financial techniques of the transit trade have their modern successors in trade finance. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Reformed Community of Locarno and the Exile of 1555 — overview and summary
On 3 March 1555 a little over a hundred men, women and children left Locarno on foot and on horseback. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLocarno around 1530: a subject town on Lake Maggiore
The Reformed community of Locarno grew in a town that had been under Confederate rule for less than a generation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTrade on the lake and the road to the passes
The economic position of Locarno rested on the lake. Since the twelfth century the town had held market privileges: Frederick Barbarossa granted a market in 1164, and in 1186 the inhabitants received… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHumanism, Italian evangelism and the first Protestants, 1525–1549
The Reformation reached Locarno through books, teachers and officials. It did not arrive as a popular movement with preachers in the market square, as it had in some towns of the German-speaking… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA community of families
Reformed sympathies spread after 1535 among several of the leading families. The Muralto family, one of the noble houses of the capitanei, joined with other Locarnese families and with exiles from… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe disputation of 1549 and the confession of 1554
For about fifteen years the Reformed of Locarno lived in a grey zone. They met privately, read Scripture and Reformed writings, corresponded with Zurich and were tolerated or ignored according to the… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA church without a pastor, 1549–1554
After Beccaria's departure the community was led by laymen. Taddeo Duno and Martino Muralto assumed its spiritual direction. Duno himself was not continuously present. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTwelve sovereigns and two faiths: the federal law of religion
The fate of the Locarnese was decided in Baden, the small town on the Limmat where the Federal Diet ( Tagsatzung, Italian Dieta) normally met, by delegates who carried instructions from their… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Diet, instructions and the recesses
The Diet was a congress of envoys without the powers of a parliament. Each canton sent one or two delegates who voted according to written instructions, and decisions recorded in the recess (… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditWhy the federal frame mattered
Three features of this federal frame shaped the outcome. The first was that no single sovereign could decide. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe award of 1554 and the law of departure
The arbitral decision of November 1554 is known mainly through the accounts of Ferdinand Meyer and the later literature that rests on him, together with the recesses of the Diet. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditProperty: sale, administration and claims
The Locarnese were allowed to sell their immovable property. The speed with which leading families re-established themselves in Zurich shows that they took substantial capital with them. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSpouses, children and those who stayed
The award required decisions about households. A married man who left took his wife and minor children with him, unless his wife refused to follow him or the authorities claimed the children for the… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOver the Alps: the departure of March 1555 and the arrival in Zurich
The emigration of the Locarnese was a journey of about two months across two jurisdictions and one of the highest passes of the central Alps. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditReception in Zurich
Zurich had reasons to welcome the Locarnese and reasons to hesitate. The city had championed their cause at the Diet, its church regarded them as brethren, and Heinrich Bullinger had corresponded… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBernardino Ochino and the Italian congregation of Zurich
The Locarnese did not dissolve into the German-speaking Reformed church of Zurich. They formed their own congregation with worship in Italian, which the Zurich authorities allowed them to do so. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditVermigli, Sozzini and the Italian circle in Zurich
Zurich became, in the second half of the 1550s, the main Swiss centre of Italian Protestant learning outside Geneva and Basel. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Italian Reformation and its Swiss network
The Locarnese community was one node in a network of Italian Protestants that stretched, in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, from Naples, Lucca and Venice to Geneva, Basel, Zurich,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBasel: Curione, Castellio and the printers
Basel offered something that neither Zurich nor Geneva could match: a university and a printing industry with a European market. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditA network of persons, print and correspondence
The Italian Protestant network functioned through three channels. The first was the movement of persons: preachers, teachers, physicians and merchants who moved between refuges as opportunities… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLocarno after 1555: loss, memory and the return of the Reformed
The departure of 1555 solved the confessional problem of the ruling cantons in Locarno. It did so at a cost that fell on the town. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom 1555 to the present: minorities, legal certainty, freedom of establishment and capital flight
The exile of 1555 is a historical episode with a legal structure. A minority was given a choice between conformity and departure, a deadline, permission to sell its property and a procedure for its… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe right to leave and the right to settle
The Locarnese were given a right to leave that was, in substance, an obligation to leave. Modern law separates the two. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditProperty on departure
The award of 1554 allowed the Locarnese to sell their property, but it did not protect them against forced sales below value, against fines imposed after their departure or against the confiscation… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCapital flight, legal certainty and the Swiss position
The movement of the Locarnese and their capital from Locarno to Zurich is an early case of what modern economists call capital flight: the transfer of wealth from a jurisdiction where its owners fear… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Locarnese in Zurich: Muralt, Orelli and the Making of a Financial Dynasty — overview and summary
When the Reformed families of Locarno crossed the Alps in the spring of 1555, they left behind houses, land, offices and a town in which several of them had belonged to the ruling nobility for four… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditZurich in 1555: the city that received the exiles
The Zurich that the Locarnese reached in May 1555 was a small city-state with a large territory. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHospitality and its limits
Hospitality had economic limits from the start. The guilds feared competition from the newcomers, who brought commercial experience and links with the markets of Lombardy. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe congregation after Ochino
The Italian church of Zurich survived the departure of its first minister. It continued to hold services in Italian with ministers drawn from the Italian Reformed diaspora and later increasingly from… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCitizenship by degrees: the legal status of the Locarnese
For a refugee in sixteenth-century Zurich, the decisive legal question was citizenship. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditGuild membership and the political career
Political rights in Zurich were exercised through the guilds. A citizen who wished to sit in the Grand Council had to be elected by his guild, whose representatives also formed the core of the Small… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMerchants of the first generation: trade, satin and velvet
The first Locarnese in Zurich lived from trade. Their capital consisted of what they had managed to take with them across the Alps, of debts owed to them in Locarno and Lombardy, and above all of… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditEvangelista Zanino and the first manufactory
The most ambitious of the Locarnese entrepreneurs was Evangelista Zanino. Born around 1530 in Locarno, he became a citizen of Zurich in 1567 and died in the city in 1603. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Muralt: from surgeons to silk manufacturers
The Muralt entered trade later than the Orelli. Martino Muralto, doctor of law and former ducal podestà, had led the Reformed community of Locarno and emigrated in 1555 with his family. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditNative capital and foreign skill: Werdmüller, Turrettini and the silk houses
The Locarnese did not build the Zurich silk industry alone. In its early phase the largest investors came from other groups. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Pestalozzi from Chiavenna
A third group of immigrants came from the Italian-speaking valleys under the rule of the Three Leagues (Grisons), in particular from Chiavenna and the Valtellina, where Protestant communities lived… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe putting-out system: how the Zurich silk economy worked
The economic form in which the Locarnese and the native silk merchants accumulated their capital was the putting-out system, known in German as Verlagssystem or Verlagswesen. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe commercial directorate of 1662
As the trade grew, the merchants organized themselves. In 1662 Zurich established a commercial directorate ( Kaufmännisches Direktorium ), followed by Basel in 1680 and Schaffhausen in 1701. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Huguenots in Zurich and the protectionist reaction
The second great wave of Protestant refugees reached Zurich after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom merchant capital to banking: Leu & Co. and the Zurich merchant-bankers
The step from trade to banking was short in early modern Zurich. A silk merchant who bought raw silk in Bergamo, paid for it with bills of exchange drawn on Milan or Genoa, advanced material to… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditZurich capital abroad
The purpose of the Zinskommission was to channel the savings of Zurich citizens into interest-bearing investments outside the city, where returns were higher than in the small domestic market. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditHans Conrad von Muralt and the institutions of the nineteenth century
The career of Hans Conrad von Muralt (1779–1869) shows how the descendants of the Locarnese helped to build the institutions of the nineteenth-century economy. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOrell Füssli, scholarship and public life
The best-known trace of the Locarnese in modern Zurich is a company name. Orell Füssli, today a listed company that prints banknotes and security documents and holds an interest in one of the largest… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Orelli as scholars
From the eighteenth century onwards the Orelli produced a remarkable sequence of scholars. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSusanna Orelli and social enterprise
One of the most original contributions of the family came from a woman who had married into it. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditRefugee capital compared: Zurich, Geneva and the Huguenot diaspora
Swiss historiography distinguishes two great waves of Protestant refugees in the early modern period. The first followed the Reformation and culminated after the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Lucchese network and the Grande Boutique
The career of Francesco Turrettini links the two cities. After his years with the Werdmüller in Zurich he founded in Geneva the Grande Boutique, a consortium of silk merchants and financiers whose… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditBrandenburg: the policy of attraction
The contrast with Brandenburg is instructive. On 29 October 1685, eleven days after the revocation, the Elector Frederick William issued the Edict of Potsdam, which invited the Huguenots to settle in… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditRelocating families and wealth to Switzerland today
The Locarnese of 1555 moved to Zurich because they had no choice. Wealthy families who move to Switzerland today usually do so by choice, for reasons of security, tax, education, quality of life or… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditTaxation according to expenditure
The best-known Swiss instrument for wealthy immigrants is taxation according to expenditure ( Besteuerung nach dem Aufwand, imposizione secondo il dispendio ), commonly called lump-sum taxation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCitizenship by degrees: modern naturalization
Modern Swiss citizenship retains the three levels that the Locarnese encountered in the sixteenth century: a person is a citizen of a commune, of a canton and of the Confederation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditSuccession, transparency and exit
Families moving to Switzerland must also plan for succession and for the reporting obligations that accompany modern wealth. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCarlo Borromeo, the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Economy of Credit — overview and summary
Chapters B.I and B.II followed the minority that left. The Reformed families of Locarno crossed the Alps in March 1555, settled in Zurich and contributed to the silk trade and to the banking culture… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Church south of the Alps before Trent
When Carlo Borromeo arrived in Milan in 1565, the parishes of the later Canton of Ticino belonged to two dioceses whose cathedrals lay outside the Confederation. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe state of the clergy
The visitation records of the 1560s and 1570s describe a clergy that the Tridentine reformers regarded as deficient in almost every respect. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCarlo Borromeo: the making of a reforming archbishop
Carlo Borromeo was born on 2 October 1538 in the castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore, the son of Count Gilberto Borromeo and of Margherita de' Medici. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Milanese model: councils, synods and the Acta
Borromeo's main instrument was legislation. Between 1564, when the first diocesan synod opened on 29 August, and 1582 he convened six provincial councils for the province of Milan, as the Council of… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe visitations of the Swiss Italian parishes
The canonical visitation was an old institution. Bishops had always had the duty to inspect the churches of their diocese. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Comasque parishes
In the four common bailiwicks and in the Bellinzonese, the ordinary was the bishop of Como. Since Como belonged to the province of Aquileia, Borromeo had no metropolitan authority there. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditColleges, orders and alliances: the institutions of reform
The decisive weakness of the Church in the Catholic Confederation, in Borromeo's analysis, was the lack of educated priests. The Catholic cantons had no university and no seminary. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Collegio Papio in Ascona
The second college was located in the territory of Ticino itself. In 1580 Bartolomeo Papio, a native of Ascona who had grown rich in Rome, where he had served the Orsini family, left 25,000 scudi to… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe nunciature and the Borromean League
In 1579 Borromeo asked the Pope to establish a permanent nunciature with the Confederates. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditClergy, confraternities and the finance of the parish
The Tridentine reform demanded a new type of parish priest. He was to reside in his parish, to preach on Sundays and feast days, to teach the catechism to children, to keep the registers of baptisms,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe fabbrica, the beneficio and the legati
Parish finance rested on several separate funds, which canon law and local practice kept apart. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Catholic doctrine on usury and its sixteenth- century codification
The Catholic Church's position on interest is often summarized as a prohibition that was gradually abandoned. The history is more precise than that. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLateran V and the Monti di Pietà (1515)
The first of the three sixteenth-century codifications concerned the Monti di Pietà, the public pawnbanks that appeared in the Italian cities from the 1460s, after the papal governor of Perugia,… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditIn eam (1571): the exchange contract regulated
The third codification concerned exchange. On 28 January 1571 Pius V issued the bull In eam, which condemned all forms of "dry" and fictitious exchange. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMonti di Pietà in Lombardy and their absence in the bailiwicks
The Monte di Pietà was an Italian invention and remained, for most of its history, a characteristic institution of the Italian city. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditWhy the bailiwicks had no Monte
The Italian bailiwicks of the Confederation did not, as far as the literature examined for this chapter shows, establish Monti di Pietà under the old regime. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditCensi, livelli and rents: the instruments of rural credit
In the parishes of the bailiwicks and the Ambrosian valleys, the censo was the ordinary form of long-term credit from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLivelli and emphyteusis
The livello was a different contract with a similar effect. In its Lombard form it was a long-term or perpetual lease of land ( emphyteusis) under which the tenant enjoyed the fruits of the land as… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditFrom censo to mortgage: the modern law
The nineteenth century dissolved the old system. The canton allowed the redemption of tithes and perpetual rents, the suppression of convents in 1848 and 1852 transferred much ecclesiastical property… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMercenaries, pensions and the Spanish alliance as capital flows
For three centuries the most valuable export of the Catholic cantons was military service. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditThe Spanish alliance and the Milanese connection
The alliance of 1587 between the Catholic cantons and Philip II of Spain, concluded in his capacity as Duke of Milan, gave the Spanish crown the right to recruit in the Catholic cantons and to pass… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditConscience, confession and discretion: a Catholic financial culture
The Catholic reform made confession the centre of religious discipline. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had already obliged every Christian to confess at least once a year to his own parish priest… Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditDiscretion as a habit
It is tempting to trace a direct line from the confessional to the numbered account. The temptation should be resisted. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditOeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones and the ethics of the bank
The 2018 document is the most detailed statement of the Catholic Church on financial markets to date. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditLugano and Geneva: two confessional economies of credit
The Geneva volume describes how Calvin's Geneva became a centre of Protestant finance. The contrast with the Catholic south is instructive, provided that it is drawn with precision. Read more Lugano · Faith, Exile and CreditMax Weber and the Catholic south
Max Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, first published in 1904–1905, made the contrast between Protestant and Catholic economic cultures a classic theme of the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLiberi e Svizzeri: From the Helvetic Republic to the Canton of 1803 — overview and summary
In the early hours of 15 February 1798 a band of armed men landed at the mouth of the Cassarate, entered Lugano by the gate of San Rocco and tried to seize the town for the Cisalpine Republic, the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe spring of 1798: Lugano between Milan and the Confederation
The events of February 1798 in Lugano can only be understood against the transformation of Lombardy in the two preceding years. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLiberi e Svizzeri: what the crowd demanded
What happened in the evening of 15 February was as important as the fighting of the morning. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonTwo cantons of the Helvetic Republic, 1798–1803
The Helvetic Republic was the first state in which the inhabitants of the former bailiwicks were citizens with equal rights. It was also a state that most of them came to dislike. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe new public law: communes, tithes and taxes
The Helvetic Republic tried to remake local government on the French pattern. In the former bailiwicks the comune replaced the old vicinanza, the assembly of the heads of household who shared the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonWar on the southern passes, 1799–1800
In 1799 the war of the Second Coalition turned Switzerland into a battlefield of foreign armies. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe French return and the cost of war
After the Russian retreat the French and the Helvetic authorities regained control of the south. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Act of Mediation and the constitution of 1803
The Canton of Ticino was created in Paris. In the winter of 1802–1803 Bonaparte, then First Consul, received the delegates of the Swiss parties in a Consulta and dictated to them a new federal… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonBuilding a state from nothing: the first months
The Grand Council met for the first time in Bellinzona on 20 May 1803. On 22 May it elected Gottardo Zurini as its first president and Vincenzo Dalberti as president of the Small Council. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonRestoration and Regeneration: the constitutions of 1814 and 1830
The fall of Napoleon put the existence of the new cantons in question. The patricians of Bern hoped to recover Vaud and Aargau, and Uri still regarded the Leventina as its own. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe regime of the landamani, 1815–1830
The dominant figure of the Restoration in Ticino was Giovan Battista Quadri, born in Lugano in 1777, who had helped to lead the liberation movement of 1798 and the assembly of Pian Povrò in 1802. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThree capitals for one canton, 1803–1881
The rivalry between the towns of Ticino had prevented the union of the two Helvetic cantons in 1801 and 1802. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe decision of 1878
The rivalry over the capital repeatedly turned violent. In 1870 a conflict over the choice of the chief town was one of the occasions on which the Confederation intervened in Ticino to restore order. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonStefano Franscini: statistics, schools and the federal state
No person embodies the transformation of Ticino between 1798 and 1848 more fully than Stefano Franscini. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonFederal Councillor and statistician of the Confederation
In 1848 Franscini was elected to the new National Council. On 16 November 1848 the Federal Assembly elected him to the first Federal Council, in the third ballot, with 68 of 132 votes. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonRadicals and conservatives, 1839–1892
The reform of 1830 gave Ticino a liberal constitution without giving it a stable way of changing governments. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe counter-revolution of July 1841
The radical government soon moved against the property of the Church. In July 1841 an order to take an inventory of the property of the convents provoked a conservative uprising. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe nuovo indirizzo, 1875–1890
The radical era ended in the elections of 21 February 1875, in which the liberalconservatives won a majority in the Grand Council. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe federal state of 1848 and the finances of the canton
The Federal Constitution of 12 September 1848 transformed the Confederation from a league of sovereign states into a federal state. For Ticino the change was double-edged. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonDebt, Church property and the first direct tax
The canton entered the federal state heavily indebted. According to the figures assembled in the cantonal school journal, the public debt stood at 5,054,265.8 lire on 5 June 1846 and at 6,300,000… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonInstitution-building as the precondition of a financial centre
A financial centre is built on institutions that are older than its banks. Lenders need a law of contracts and securities, a register that shows who owns land and what charges it bears, courts that… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonFrom cantonal to federal private law: 1881 and 1912
The unification of private law in Switzerland proceeded in two steps, each of which reduced the scope of the cantonal code. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCourts, judges and the hierarchy of justice
The judicial organization of the canton grew in layers. The first government of 1803 created a Court of Appeal of thirteen judges, eight district courts and thirty-eight justices of the peace, one… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonRefuge of the Risorgimento: Exiles, Printing Presses and Political Asylum — overview and summary
Between the Restoration of 1815 and the capture of Rome in 1870, the young Canton of Ticino lived next door to one of the most closely policed territories in Europe. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonA border canton as refuge, 1791–1847
Italian political refugees reached the territory of today's Ticino before the canton existed. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCantonal asylum and the pressure of the powers
Until 1848 asylum was a cantonal matter. After the Federal Treaty of 1815 had restored the sovereignty of the cantons, the liberal cantons that emerged after 1830 admitted large numbers of refugees… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonYoung Italy in Ticino
Giuseppe Mazzini founded Giovine Italia (Young Italy) in Marseilles in 1831. Ticino immediately became one of its bases. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonPrinting for Italy: the presses of Lugano and Capolago
Lugano had printed for Italian readers long before the Risorgimento. The Agnelli press, active in Lugano from 1746 to 1799, published more than 400 titles, books and periodicals, among them the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Tipografia Elvetica di Capolago
The most important of the exile presses was founded at Capolago, at the southern end of Lake Lugano, on 9 October 1830, a few weeks after the liberal revolution in the canton. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonContraband of ideas: books across the border
A book printed in Capolago reached its readers in Milan by the same routes as other contraband. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Documenti della guerra santa d'Italia
After the revolution of 1848 the Tipografia Elvetica became the main publisher of the democratic account of the war. Read more Lugano · The Young Canton1848: volunteers, refugees and the new federal state
The revolution in Milan began on 18 March 1848, when a crowd of about 10,000 people gathered in front of the town hall and demanded a free press, a civic guard and a national assembly. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe exodus of August 1848
The Sardinian army was defeated at Custoza in late July 1848, and Radetzky re-entered Milan in early August. The return of the Austrians set off a mass flight. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCarlo Cattaneo in Castagnola
Carlo Cattaneo was born in Milan on 15 June 1801, the son of the goldsmith Melchiorre Cattaneo. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonRailways, land reclamation and the public good
Cattaneo's interests in Ticino extended far beyond the school. He promoted the reclamation of the Magadino plain, the marshy delta of the Ticino river between Bellinzona and Lake Maggiore, for which… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonMazzini, conspiracy and the limits of asylum
Giuseppe Mazzini was born in Genoa on 22 June 1805 and went into exile in 1831 after his arrest as a member of the carboneria. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonArticle 57 of the Federal Constitution of 1848
The Federal Constitution of 12 September 1848 left asylum in the hands of the cantons. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonAustria strikes back: the Capuchins, the blockade and the expulsion of 1853
The radical government of Ticino pursued in the early 1850s a programme of secularization that combined school reform, the suppression of religious houses and the transfer of their property to the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonDiplomacy: Bern, Vienna, London and Milan
The conflict became an international affair. The British chargé d'affaires in Bern, William Dougal Christie, wrote to the Federal President Wilhelm Naeff that "the blockade of the Tessin has not been… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonMoney for the nation: financing the Risorgimento across the border
Exile politics was expensive. Newspapers and pamphlets had to be printed and smuggled, agents and couriers paid, weapons bought and stored, families of prisoners supported and journeys financed. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCouriers, arms and the cantonal war commissioner
Arms followed money. In 1848 the volunteers needed rifles, powder and ammunition, which were bought in Switzerland or brought from Piedmont and stored near the frontier. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonAfter unification: Ticino, Italy and the new exiles, 1861–1914
The proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 changed the position of Ticino fundamentally. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonPietro Gori, 1898 and the socialists
The 1890s brought a sharper federal response. After a wave of anarchist attacks in Europe, the Federal Council prepared a partial revision of the federal criminal code to punish anarchist crimes,… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonIrredentism and italianità
Olivetti's expulsion points to a new sensitivity of the federal authorities. Italian nationalism after unification looked chiefly at Trento and Trieste, which remained Austrian, and occasionally also… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonFrom political refuge to financial refuge: the modern legal frame
The history told in this chapter gave Lugano a reputation that outlived its causes. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe political-offence exception and the fiscal exception
The nineteenth-century practice described above, that persons who had fled because of political offences were not extradited, survives in the Federal Act on International Mutual Assistance in… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonForeign pressure then and now
The parallels between the crisis of 1853 and the pressure on the Swiss financial centre in the early twenty-first century are close enough to deserve a brief comparison. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Gotthard Railway: Capital, Treaties and the Opening of the South — overview and summary
The previous chapters followed the political birth of the canton (Chapter C.I) and the Italian exiles who made Lugano and Capolago a refuge of the Risorgimento (Chapter C.II). Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Alpine railway question, 1845–1869
The railway question reached Ticino almost as soon as railways reached Switzerland. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonItalian unification and Escher's conversion
Two events in the early 1860s decided the question. The first was the unification of Italy. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe treaties of 1869 and 1871 and the subsidies
The decisive negotiations took place in Bern in September and October 1869. Representatives of Switzerland, Italy, the North German Confederation, Baden and Württemberg met at a conference chaired by… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe accession of the German Empire in 1871
The war of 1870 and 1871 delayed the German contribution. After the proclamation of the German Empire in January 1871 the new Reich took over the obligations that the North German Confederation and… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCapital: the Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft, Alfred Escher and the banks
The subsidies covered less than half of the estimated cost. The remaining CHF 102 million had to come from investors, who had to be found in 1871, in a Europe that had just emerged from the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe company of 6 December 1871
With the financing secured, the Gotthard Association transferred its rights to a company limited by shares. The Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft was constituted in Lucerne on 6 December 1871. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonBuilding the tunnel: Louis Favre, labour and the strike of Göschenen
The great tunnel between Göschenen and Airolo was the critical work of the whole enterprise, which the company let as a single lump-sum contract. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe strike of 27 and 28 July 1875
In July 1875 the miners at Göschenen stopped work. The immediate causes were the bad air in the tunnel and the low pay. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe financing crisis of 1876–1878
The financial plan of 1869 rested on an estimate that proved far too low. When the first chief engineer, Robert Gerwig, left the company in 1875, he identified a shortfall of about CHF 34 million. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe federal subsidy and the referendum of 19 January 1879
The Swiss share of CHF 8 million could no longer be raised from the cantons alone. Zurich's voters refused a further cantonal contribution in 1878, and other cantons hesitated. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe legal aftermath: the Zug case
The reduction of the programme had consequences for the cantons that had pledged subsidies for particular lines. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Ticino lines and the opening of 1882
The first trains in Ticino ran eight years before the tunnel opened. As the convention of 1869 required, the company built the lines in the Ticino plain first. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe opening of the south: the railway and Ticino's economy
The railway changed the economic geography of Ticino within a generation, and Bellinzona felt the change first. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLugano: tourism, hotels and local capital
For Lugano the railway opened a new industry. The Gotthard tunnel marked, in the words of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, the beginning of the great conquest of the Swiss Alps by tourism,… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonNationalization and the Gotthard Convention of 1909
The crisis of the 1870s had shown the weaknesses of a railway system built by competing private companies: duplicated lines, uncoordinated timetables, speculative financing and the dependence of the… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Gotthard controversy and the treaty referendum
The convention provoked one of the strongest popular protest movements of the period before the First World War. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe Gotthard axis in the twentieth century: from the road tunnel to AlpTransit
Under the Federal Railways the Gotthard line was among the first main lines to be electrified. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonFrom the "tunnel war" to the NRLA
The idea of a base tunnel, a flat railway through the Alps at the level of the valleys, was discussed from the 1960s. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonInfrastructure finance and law today: from the Gotthard syndicate to the railway fund
The financing of the NRLA reversed the structure of 1869. The original Gotthard railway was built by a private company with CHF 102 million of market capital and CHF 85 million of grants from three… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe transit charge and the Land Transport Agreement
The second pillar of the modern Gotthard regime is the charge on road freight. Art. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonWhat the Gotthard means for Lugano as a financial centre
The base tunnels have moved Lugano closer to the two financial centres that define its market. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe First Ticinese Banks and the Crash of 1914 — overview and summary
The Canton of Ticino had no bank of its own until the middle of the nineteenth century. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCredit before banks
Before 1858 the territory of Ticino had a dense web of credit but no bank. Loans were made between persons, recorded by notaries and secured on land, houses, livestock and future harvests. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe savings bank of 1833 and the Banca Cantonale Ticinese
The first financial institution of the canton was the Cassa Ticinese di Risparmio, founded in 1833. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonA cantonal bank that was not a State bank
The legal form of the Banca Cantonale Ticinese explains much of its later history. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLugano's bank: the Banca della Svizzera Italiana
Lugano received its first bank of significance in 1873, when the Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI) opened in the town. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonItalian connections
The Italian link established at the foundation grew stronger over time. A research project of the University of Milan on industry and banking in Ticino between 1880 and 1915 identifies the control of… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonPopular banks, party banks and the wave of the 1880s and 1890s
The erosion of the Banca Cantonale Ticinese's privileged position and the economic change brought by the Gotthard railway opened the way for new banks. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonParty banks
The defining feature of the Ticinese banking system before 1914 was its link with party politics. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonMoney from overseas: remittances and the Banca Svizzera Americana
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. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe San Francisco agency
For more than a decade the agency in San Francisco was the heart of the bank. By 1909 it held deposits of about CHF 6 million, against only about CHF 1 million at the head office in Locarno. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonEmigrant savings and the crash
The connection between emigration and banking had a darker side that became visible in 1914. The deposits of emigrant families were among the main sources of funding of the Locarnese banks. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonHotels, funiculars, local railways and Italian credit
The opening of the Gotthard line in 1882 gave Lugano and Locarno access to the travellers of northern Europe. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLocal railways
The same pattern applied with larger sums to the local railways that connected the valleys with the Gotthard line. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonLending in Italy
Beyond tourism and railways, the Ticinese banks lent heavily in Italy. Wetter observed in 1914 that the banks, unable to employ their deposits in the canton, had been forced to "go abroad", above all… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe crash of January 1914
The crisis broke in Locarno in the first days of 1914. The most detailed account of its beginning comes from an unexpected source, a civil judgment of the Federal Court of 13 September 1917 in a… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe scale of the collapse
Three of the seven principal Ticinese banks failed in 1914: the Banca Cantonale Ticinese, the Credito Ticinese and the Banca Popolare Ticinese. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonAfter the crash: liquidation, liability and politics
The depositors of 1914 stood at the end of the line. Swiss law gave them no deposit insurance, no priority over other creditors and no claim against the canton, whatever the name of the bank they had… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonIrregularities and responsibility
The expert reports commissioned after the failures revealed serious irregularities in the management of the collapsed banks. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonA bank of the State and the arrival of the big banks
The canton's answer to the crash was a bank that it owned and guaranteed. The legislative decree of 19 January 1914, adopted while the Credito Ticinese was in bankruptcy and the Banca Cantonale… Read more Lugano · The Young CantonThe big banks come south
The crisis also opened Ticino to the large Swiss banks. Two of them had arrived before the crash. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonCantonal banks and the State guarantee today
The lesson of 1914, that a bank bearing the name of the canton should be backed by the canton, shaped Swiss banking law for most of the twentieth century. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonRevision of 2003 and governance
The most significant revision of the law took place in 2003 and entered into force on 30 June 2004. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonDepositor protection, supervision and too big to fail
Federal banking supervision began two decades after the Ticinese crash. A first federal banking bill was drafted in 1916 and then shelved. Read more Lugano · The Young CantonToo big to fail and the Credit Suisse crisis of 2023
The failure of a large bank is governed by the provisions on systemically important banks in the Banking Act, introduced after the financial crisis of 2008. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreWar, Fascism and the Border, 1914-1945 — overview and summary
Between 1914 and 1945 the Canton of Ticino lived on a border that twice became a front line of European politics without ever becoming a front line of war. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreA neutral canton on a belligerent border, 1914–1918
When war broke out in August 1914, Switzerland mobilized its army and declared its neutrality. For Ticino the decisive date came nine months later. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreDeserters, internees and the general strike in Lugano
The border brought people as well as goods. From the beginning of the war deserters and draft evaders from the belligerent armies crossed into Switzerland. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreA strengthened Swiss financial centre
For Switzerland as a whole, the war had a paradoxical financial effect. The Historical Dictionary concludes that the Swiss financial centre emerged from the conflict strengthened. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreBanking in Lugano between the wars
The banking system that Ticino possessed after 1920 was the product of the crash of 1914. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreModest volumes
The interwar flows of Italian capital into Ticino should not be overstated. The balance sheet of the Banca della Svizzera Italiana stood at about CHF 88.3 million in 1914 and at only CHF 102.2… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFascism, irredentism and the Gotthard
The first Fascist group ( fascio) on Swiss soil was founded in Lugano in May 1921, among the Italian residents of the town. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFonjallaz, Rezzonico and the march on Bellinzona
A second current was organized Fascism of Swiss nationals. In 1933 Colonel Arthur Fonjallaz, a former instructor of the Swiss army and a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology, founded in… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrom rhetoric to military planning
In the late 1930s the Fascist rhetoric hardened. On 30 November 1938 Mussolini told the Fascist Grand Council: "We shall carry our frontier to the Gotthard." The claim to the "median chain of the… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe anti-fascist exile in Ticino
The tradition of political asylum that Chapter C.II describes for the Risorgimento revived after 1922. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe flight of Giovanni Bassanesi
The most spectacular action of the Lugano exiles took place on 11 July 1930. At 10.30 in the morning the young pilot Giovanni Bassanesi took off from the airfield of Bellinzona, picked up a load of… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe lira, currency control and the first Italian flight capital
Italy's control of capital movements began in the First World War. According to the Bank of Italy's history of its own institution, the central bank financed the Treasury on a large scale during the… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreHow money crossed the border
The techniques of capital flight from Italy to Ticino in the 1920s and 1930s were simple and in principle the same as after 1945. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Banking Act of 1934 and Article 47
The Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks of 8 November 1934 was the Confederation's answer to the banking crisis of the early 1930s. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreGerman pressure and the myth of the Jewish accounts
The second strand of the debate concerns Germany. The Weimar Republic had introduced a Reich flight tax in December 1931, and after 1933 the National Socialist regime tightened the currency controls… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe southern border in the Second World War
From June 1940, when Italy entered the war and France was defeated, Switzerland was surrounded by the Axis powers and the territories they controlled. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreAfter 8 September 1943
The armistice between Italy and the Allies, announced on 8 September 1943, transformed the situation on the Ticinese border overnight. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Ossola Republic and its fall
In the autumn of 1944 the border of Ticino witnessed one of the episodes of the Italian resistance. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCoal, gold, rice and money: the war economy of the frontier
The most important economic function of Ticino in the Second World War was transit. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe time of rice
The war also reversed the direction of the old smuggling economy. In the First World War and in the interwar period, Ticino had supplied Italy with goods that were scarce or highly taxed there. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreOperation Sunrise: Lugano, Ascona and the end of the war in Italy
In the last months of the war, the border region of Ticino became the setting of the secret negotiations that led to the surrender of the German forces in Italy. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrom 1934 to today: secrecy, capital flight, dormant assets and asylum
Article 47 of the Banking Act is still in force, more than ninety years after its enactment, but its function has changed. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreDormant assets
The dormant accounts of victims of Nazi persecution became the subject of an international crisis in 1995–1998, which led to the creation of the Independent Committee of Eminent Persons under Paul… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreAsylum and the memory of the border
The refugee policy of the Second World War shaped the modern law of asylum in Switzerland more than any other experience. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Lira Economy: Flight Capital, Spalloni and the Boom of Lugano Banking, 1945-1975 — overview and summary
In 1945 the Canton of Ticino had eleven banks with about five hundred employees. By 1982 it counted forty-four banking institutions employing more than seven thousand people. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreItaly after 1945: reconstruction, miracle and fear
Italy emerged from the Second World War with a destroyed infrastructure, an inflated currency and a political order that had to be rebuilt from the ground. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrom the centre-left to the years of lead
The political climate of the 1960s did not calm these fears. When the Christian Democrats opened their governments to the Socialist Party in 1962 and 1963, the first centre-left coalitions… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Italian saver between the tax office and the exchange office
The Italian tax system of the early Republic rested on a mix of old real taxes on land, buildings and business income and a progressive surtax on total income, the imposta complementare. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe exchange-control regime
The second Italian constraint was exchange control. The fascist regime had established a comprehensive control of foreign exchange in the 1930s, and Chapter D.I describes how Italian money… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreHow the money crossed: couriers, banknotes and compensation
The border between Italy and the Canton of Ticino forms part of the Swiss–Italian border of 744 km, the longest border of both countries. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe return of the lira
A Swiss bank that bought Italian banknotes needed to dispose of them. Some were sold to Swiss residents and tourists travelling to Italy, while others were spent by Italian visitors in Ticino. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCompensation and the invoice
Cash was the simplest method, but it was not the only one. The second classic technique was compensation ( compensazione ). Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreWhere the money went: accounts, numbers and bearer paper
The banknote that crossed the border at Chiasso ended in one of a small number of instruments. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFiduciary deposits and the withholding tax
Swiss law levied a federal withholding tax ( imposta preventiva, Verrechnungssteuer) on interest paid by Swiss banks on deposits, at a rate that rose from 15 per cent at its introduction on 1… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe boom of Lugano and Chiasso banking
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. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe big banks, the foreign banks and Chiasso
The big Swiss banks responded by expanding their own presence. Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corporation and Credit Suisse enlarged their branches in Lugano, opened new ones in Chiasso,… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe fiduciari and the parabanking sector
Alongside the banks, the lira economy created a second industry: the fiduciary and financial companies that founded, domiciled and administered the structures in which Italian wealth was held. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrom the fiduciary company to the regulated profession
The fiduciary sector of Lugano became the institutional memory of the lira economy. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreLugano becomes the third financial centre
In the middle of the 1960s Lugano was a town of about 25,000 inhabitants. Its economy had rested since the opening of the Gotthard railway on tourism, trade and the services of a regional capital… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrontalieri and the labour market
The banks also needed staff. The Ticinese labour market could not supply the clerks, cashiers, accountants and secretaries that forty banks required, and the banks recruited from three sources: young… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreBern against the flood: federal measures against foreign money
The Swiss authorities did not regard the inflow of foreign capital as an unmixed blessing. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreInterest bans, negative commissions and the banknote limit
The statutory measures of the 1960s began with the federal decree of 1964 on combating inflation through measures in the money, capital and credit markets, which entered into force on 17 March 1964… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreWhat the measures did to Lugano
The federal measures were designed against speculative money that sought to profit from an appreciation of the franc. Flight capital from Italy behaved differently. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreRome closes the door: the criminal law of 1976
The period ends with a change in Italian law. In the lira crisis of early 1976, with the foreign exchange market suspended and the Communist Party approaching the Christian Democrats in the polls,… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Swiss side of the border
Swiss law did not change in response. Switzerland did not grant mutual assistance for currency offences. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCash across the border today
Although the spallone with his briefcase of banknotes belongs to history, cross-border cash has not disappeared. Its legal treatment today illustrates how far the law has moved since 1976. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Italian and European rules
Italy, as a Member State of the European Union, applies the Union's rules on cash controls. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFlight capital and the reputation of a financial centre
Swiss law and Swiss banking practice drew for decades a sharp line between three kinds of foreign money. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFlight capital today
Capital flight has not disappeared from the world. Many States still restrict the export of capital, among them several of the emerging markets whose wealthy families are courted by Swiss banks… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Chiasso Scandal of 1977 and the Birth of Swiss Due Diligence — overview and summary
On 14 April 1977 the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, known in Ticino as the Credito Svizzero and abroad as Credit Suisse, announced that irregular transactions at its branch in Chiasso had exposed the… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreChiasso: a border town becomes a banking town
Chiasso lies at the southern tip of the Mendrisiotto, on the frontier with the Italian city of Como. Its modern history begins with the Gotthard railway. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreChiasso in the lira economy
The demand for the branch's services came from Italy. Chapter D.II describes the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, the political tensions of the 1970s and the currency regime that made… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe men of the Chiasso branch
Ernst Kuhrmeier was the central figure of the affair. He was deputy director of the Chiasso branch when Texon was created in 1961 and later became its director. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreTexon Finanzanstalt: the bank within the bank
Texon Finanzanstalt was established in Liechtenstein in April 1961. Its legal form, the Anstalt (establishment), was a creation of the Liechtenstein Persons and Companies Act of 1926, a flexible… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreWhere the money went: wine, tourism and plastics
The funds that passed through Texon flowed back to Italy. This was the economic logic of the construction. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreDiscovery in April 1977 and the size of the losses
The turning point came with the oil crisis of 1973 and the recession that followed it in Italy. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe reaction of the markets and the National Bank
The news struck a Swiss banking system that had already been unsettled by the Weisscredit failure. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCredit Suisse after Chiasso: management, supervision and reorganization
The first question after April 1977 concerned the responsibility of the bank's leadership. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreSupervision without new law
The Commission's conclusion in its report for 1977 was cautious. Only after the full use of the existing supervisory instruments, it wrote, would it become apparent "whether changes are necessary… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe criminal proceedings and the trial of 1979
The criminal investigation lay with the public prosecutor's office of the Sottoceneri in Lugano. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe verdict of 3 July 1979
The Court of Assizes delivered its verdict on 3 July 1979. Kuhrmeier and Laffranchi, whom the court regarded as equal in professional responsibility, were each sentenced to four and a half years'… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Liechtenstein dimension
Texon and the Weisscredit establishment in Schaan belonged to a type of entity that Liechtenstein had made available in large numbers since the 1920s. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentrePolitical consequences in Ticino and in Bern
In Ticino the affair reached the cantonal government. Fabio Vassalli, a young member of the Council of State for the Christian Democratic People's Party (PPD), had entered the government in 1975… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe banking initiative of the Social Democrats
The Social Democratic Party took the argument to the people. Its popular initiative "against the abuse of banking secrecy and the power of the banks" ( gegen den Missbrauch des Bankgeheimnisses und… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe due diligence agreement of 1977 (CDB 77)
The agreement that the Swiss banks concluded in the weeks after Chiasso had been under discussion before the scandal broke. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreIdentification of the client and the beneficial owner
The first obligation of the agreement was the verification of the identity of the contracting partner. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe arbitration commission and the penalties
The agreement created its own enforcement mechanism. Violations were investigated and judged by an arbitration commission ( Schiedskommission ), whose secretariat was run by the National Bank. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreFrom CDB 77 to CDB 20: self-regulation becomes law
The agreement of 1977 was concluded for five years, and its renewal in five-year cycles became the method by which the banks adapted it to new problems. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe CDB 98 and the Anti-Money Laundering Act
The next step was federal legislation. The Federal Act on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing of 10 October 1997 (Anti-Money Laundering Act, AMLA) extended due diligence duties to the… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe CDB 20 and its place in federal law
The current version, the CDB 20, was adopted on 13 June 2018, approved by FINMA in the same year and entered into force on 1 January 2020. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreKnow your customer today: the practitioner's view after Chiasso
The relationship manager who opens an account in Lugano today works within a statutory framework whose architecture still reflects the agreement of 1977. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreAMLO-FINMA and the risk-based approach
The FINMA Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance turns these statutory duties into a risk-based system. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe prohibitions on capital flight and tax evasion today
The prohibitions of active assistance in capital flight and tax evasion remain in Chapters 6 and 7 of the CDB 20 with substantially the same content as in 1977. Their practical meaning has changed. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreMoney Laundering, Mafia and the Criminal Law Response, 1980-1990 — overview and summary
In February 1987 the police in Bellinzona seized about 100 kilograms of morphine base and heroin, at that time the largest drug seizure ever made in Switzerland. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreLugano around 1980: a financial centre without a money laundering offence
By the end of the 1970s Lugano had become, in the words of the Ticino bankers' association, "la terza piazza finanziaria svizzera, dopo Zurigo e Ginevra", a position built above all in the 1960s and… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Ticino prosecution service
The Ticino criminal justice system of the time was organized in two districts. The public prosecutor of the Sottoceneri sat in Lugano and covered the districts of Lugano and Mendrisio, where nearly… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Pizza Connection: heroin, pizzerias and Swiss accounts
The name "Pizza Connection" was coined by the American press for a trafficking network in which Sicilian Mafia families refined morphine base into heroin in laboratories around Palermo and shipped it… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreSwiss proceedings in Lugano and Bellinzona
Swiss law made the Ticino prosecutors' task difficult. Since laundering was not an offence, they had to prosecute the Swiss end of the network as participation in drug trafficking, which required… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreProsecutors across the border: Bernasconi, Falcone and Del Ponte
The public prosecutor's office of the Sottoceneri in Lugano was in the 1970s and early 1980s one of the few Swiss prosecution authorities that dealt regularly with international financial crime. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCarla Del Ponte in Lugano
Carla Del Ponte, born in Ticino in 1947, opened her own law and notary's office in Lugano in 1975 and then joined the Lugano prosecution service as investigating magistrate and public prosecutor. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreBanco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi and the Lugano link
The largest Italian banking failure of the post-war period also passed through Switzerland. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreGelli in Geneva and the limits of Swiss law
The Ambrosiano case reached Switzerland a second time through the person of Licio Gelli. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Lebanon Connection and the Kopp affair, 1987–1990
The case that ended the career of a Federal Councillor began with drugs found in Ticino. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreParliament, the commission of inquiry and the Federal Court
The affair turned at once into a debate on the law. On 15 December 1988 the National Council discussed four interventions on money laundering. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreMaking laundering a crime: Articles 305bis and 305ter SCC (1990)
The legislative history of the Swiss money laundering offence began in Lugano. After Bernasconi delivered his report in September 1986, the Federal Department of Justice and Police submitted a… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreArticle 305bis: money laundering
In its current wording, Article 305bis(1) SCC punishes "any person who carries out an act that is aimed at frustrating the identification of the origin, the tracing or the forfeiture of assets which… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreSelf-regulation alongside the criminal law
The criminal provisions gave the banks' self-regulation a sharper edge. The due diligence agreement had been renewed in 1987 after its first ten years, and the 1987 version required the bank to… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe second package of 1994: criminal organizations, reporting and confiscation
The criminal provisions of 1990 did not stand alone. On 7 February 1990 the Financial Action Task Force, created by the G7 summit of 1989 and counting Switzerland among its members, adopted its forty… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe right to report: Article 305ter(2) SCC
The same Act added a second paragraph to Article 305ter SCC. It provides that the persons covered by paragraph 1 "are entitled to report to the internal law enforcement authorities or the federal… Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreMutual assistance with Italy: from the convention of 1959 to the agreement of 1998
The cooperation between the prosecutors of Lugano, Bellinzona, Milan and Palermo rested on three layers of law. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreHow a request from Milan was executed in Lugano
The procedure that the Ticino prosecutors followed can be described in a sequence of steps. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe Swiss–Italian agreement of 1998
The bilateral agreement of 10 September 1998 aimed to simplify and accelerate the application of the European Convention between the two States. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreMani Pulite, Swiss accounts and the reputation crisis of the 1990s
On 17 February 1992 the Milan prosecutors arrested Mario Chiesa, the socialist president of a Milan old people's home, while he was taking a bribe. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreTicino's own cases
The 1990s also brought cases in which the Swiss intermediaries themselves were tried in Ticino. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreThe modern framework for an institution's defence
The criminal provisions of 1990 and 1994 punished laundering after the fact. They did not create an administrative system that obliged all financial intermediaries to prevent it. Read more Lugano · The Rise of the Third Financial CentreCorporate criminal liability: Article 102 SCC
The second pillar of an institution's exposure is its own criminal liability. The Federal Council had refused in 1989 to make companies criminally liable for money laundering and had referred the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Lugano Banking Landscape: Institutions, Numbers and Business Models — overview and summary
At the end of 2024 the Canton of Ticino counted 39 banks, twelve of which had their head office in the canton, and 159 bank branches. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayMeasuring a regional financial centre
A financial centre that is not a canton and has no stock exchange of its own does not appear as such in any official statistic. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayWhat the figures cannot show
Three limits of the statistics deserve emphasis because they are often overlooked in the public debate. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrom peak to plateau: banks, branches and employees since 1990
When the period covered by Part D of this book ended, the Ticino banking market was still growing. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayStabilization since 2020
From 2016 onwards the USTAT tables provide a homogeneous series. The number of banks in Ticino fell from 45 in 2016 to 39 in 2020, rose slightly to 40 in 2023 and returned to 39 in 2024. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayValue added, savings and mortgages: the domestic weight of banking
The most recent estimate of the economic contribution of the financial sector in Ticino comes from BAK Economics, which calculated in 2025 that the sector generated about one twelfth of cantonal… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySavings and mortgages: a series since 1965
The USTAT series on savings deposits and mortgage loans of banks in Ticino reaches back to 1965 and offers the longest continuous measure of the domestic banking market. Table 3 gives selected years. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayBancaStato and the domestic banks
The Banca dello Stato del Cantone Ticino, known since its rebranding as BancaStato, was created in 1915 as an autonomous foundation under cantonal public law in the aftermath of the banking crash of… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayRaiffeisen, PostFinance and the national retail banks
The second pillar of domestic banking in Ticino is the Raiffeisen group. The regional federation of Raiffeisen banks in Ticino and the Moesano valley of Graubünden joined the ABT in 1995. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayUBS and the end of Credit Suisse in Ticino
The big banks have been present in Ticino since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their regional history is intertwined with the history of the financial centre. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayWhat the merger means for the financial centre
For the Ticino market the end of Credit Suisse has three consequences. The first is concentration in retail and commercial banking. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe rise and end of BSI
Banca della Svizzera Italiana was founded in Lugano in 1873 and opened its main office on the Piazza della Riforma. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe sale to EFG and the integration
The decision that ended BSI as an independent bank was taken in the same announcement. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe independent Lugano banks
Beyond the State bank, the national retail banks and the big bank, the Lugano market contains a group of banks that have their head office in Ticino, are controlled by families or local shareholders… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayBanca del Sempione, PKB and Banca Zarattini
Banca del Sempione was established in 1960 as a private bank for families and investors and joined the ABT in 1969. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian and foreign banks: entries and exits
Foreign-controlled banks have been the largest category of banks in Ticino since the boom of the 1960s and 1970s. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayBPS (Suisse) and the BPER takeover
The largest remaining Swiss subsidiary of an Italian bank with its head office in Lugano is Banca Popolare di Sondrio (Suisse) SA, known as BPS (Suisse), which joined the ABT in 1999. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayBusiness models, compliance costs and consolidation
The banks described in the preceding sections can be grouped by the way they earn their income. Five business models dominate the Lugano market today, and most banks combine two or more of them. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe costs of compliance
All five models carry the costs of a regulatory framework that has grown continuously since the 1990s. A Swiss bank must be licensed by FINMA under Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayConsolidation and its limits
Consolidation has been the market's answer to these costs. The number of banks in Ticino halved between 2008 and 2020. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayPeople, training and the bankers' association
In 2023 the banks in Ticino employed 5,584 persons, equal to 5,218 full-time equivalents. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySalaries
Salaries in Ticino are lower than in the rest of Switzerland. In 2022 the median gross monthly salary in Ticino was CHF 5,301, against CHF 6,510 for Switzerland. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Associazione Bancaria Ticinese
The ABT was founded in 1920 to extend cooperation among the banks of the canton and to regulate their activities. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayLugano, Geneva and Zurich: the third centre in comparison
Comparisons between financial centres are usually made with the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), published twice a year by the London think tank Z/Yen together with the China Development… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe outlook
Several developments will shape the Lugano banking market in the coming decade, and most of them are treated in detail in Part K. The first is demography. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrom Scudo Fiscale to Automatic Exchange: Italy and the End of Banking Secrecy — overview and summary
Between 2001 and 2017 the Italian Republic offered its residents five opportunities to bring into the open the money they held abroad without having declared it: three anonymous tax shields and two… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Italian client and Swiss secrecy before 2001
At the end of the twentieth century the legal position of an Italian resident with an undeclared account in Lugano rested on two pillars of Swiss law. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe treaty framework of 1974 and 1976
The bilateral treaty relations between Switzerland and Italy in tax matters rested on two instruments of the 1970s. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe first tax shield, 2001–2003
The first scudo fiscale was enacted in the autumn of 2001 as part of a decree on the introduction of the euro. Decree-Law No. 350 of 25 September 2001, converted with amendments by Law No. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe reopening of 2002–2003
The results of the first window disappointed the government's revenue expectations. Decree-Law No. 282 of 24 December 2002, converted by Law No. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe effect on Lugano
The Lugano banks first protested against the shield and then adapted to it. NENS observes that the Swiss banks initially reacted with hostility, then opened offices in Milan in order to keep the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe European savings agreement of 2004
The European Union adopted Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments in order to ensure that interest paid in one Member State to an… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Italian share
Italy was consistently the second largest recipient of retention tax after Germany. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe turn of 2009: the OECD standard, black lists and Italian pressure
The financial crisis of 2008 transformed the politics of tax havens. Governments that had rescued their banks with public money turned to the taxation of undeclared offshore wealth. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayDoubled periods and the question of retroactivity
Paragraphs 2-bis and 2-ter, added to Article 12 shortly afterwards, doubled the periods within which the tax authorities could assess the income presumed under the new rule and the penalties for… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe scudo ter of 2009–2010
The third tax shield, commonly called the scudo ter, was inserted as Article 13-bis into Decree-Law No. 78 of 1 July 2009 by the conversion law of 3 August 2009. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayOutflows and retention in Lugano
The banks of Ticino had prepared for the worst. In June 2009 a member of the Grand Council quoted forecasts that a quarter of the Italian deposits in Ticino banks could leave if Italy introduced a… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrom the white money strategy to the exit letters
After 2009 the Federal Council pursued two lines of policy that were meant to protect the private banking industry without returning to the old secrecy. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe limits of the bank's power: the Lugano judgment of 2015
The restrictions raised a question of Swiss private law: could a bank refuse to pay out the assets of a client who did not prove his tax compliance? The question came before the courts of Ticino. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayVoluntary disclosure and self-laundering, 2014–2017
The Italian voluntary disclosure ( collaborazione volontaria) was enacted by Law No. 186 of 15 December 2014, which inserted Articles 5-quater to 5-septies into Decree-Law No. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe voluntary disclosure bis
A second round, commonly called voluntary disclosure bis, was opened by Article 7 of Decree-Law No. 193 of 22 October 2016, converted by Law No. 225 of 1 December 2016. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Roadmap and the Protocol of 23 February 2015
On 23 February 2015 the head of the Federal Department of Finance, Eveline Widmer- Schlumpf, and the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Pier Carlo Padoan, signed two documents in Milan. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe group requests in the courts
Italy made use of this possibility. A group request of 23 November 2018 concerned Italian residents who had held accounts with a particular bank, had received a letter announcing restrictions for… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe black lists and the frontier workers
The promise to remove Switzerland from the black lists was fulfilled slowly. The voluntary disclosure treated Switzerland as a cooperative jurisdiction from 2015. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayAutomatic exchange of information
The automatic exchange of financial account information is the instrument that ended the economic function of banking secrecy towards Italy. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian use of the data
The Agenzia delle Entrate has integrated CRS data into its risk analysis and into its programme of "communications for the promotion of compliance" ( comunicazioni per la promozione dell'adempimento… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySwiss criminal law today: secrecy, sovereignty and tax predicate offences
Article 47 of the Banking Act remains in force and has been strengthened. In its current version it punishes with a custodial sentence of up to three years or a monetary penalty any person who… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTax offences as predicate offences to money laundering
The most important change in Swiss criminal law concerning undeclared foreign assets was the inclusion of serious tax offences among the predicate offences to money laundering. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayLegacy Italian assets and inherited accounts: a practitioner's checklist
Nine years after the start of the automatic exchange, legacy Italian assets still reach the desks of Lugano bankers, lawyers and fiduciaries. They arise in four typical situations. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayQuadro RW, IVAFE and the penalties
The second question concerns the monitoring obligations. An Italian resident who holds a Swiss account, directly or as beneficial owner of an entity, must declare it in the quadro RW of his annual… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayA checklist
For the practitioner. Before advising on a legacy Italian position in Lugano: - Identify the beneficial owner and his tax residence for every year since 2009, and check whether an Italian citizen who… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayIndependent Asset Managers, Trustees and Fiduciaries under FinIA — overview and summary
Behind the banks of Lugano stands a second financial industry that is less visible from the street and more characteristic of the place. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe fiduciari of Lugano: origins of a parabanking industry
The Italian word fiduciario has a different meaning on each side of the border at Chiasso. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe excesses of the boom years
The absence of regulation had consequences. The cantonal Commission on the Constitution and Laws quoted in 2021 a description of the Fiduciary Act of 1984 as having been adopted "as a response to the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Ticino Fiduciary Act: a cantonal licence for a whole profession
The Grand Council of the Canton of Ticino adopted the Law on the Exercise of the Fiduciary Professions ( Legge sull'esercizio delle professioni di fiduciario, LFid) on 18 June 1984. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCategories, requirements and the personal licence
The law of 2009 distinguished three categories of fiduciario. The commercial fiduciary ( fiduciario commercialista, Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Supervisory Authority
The law of 2009 created the Supervisory Authority on the Exercise of the Fiduciary Professions ( Autorità di vigilanza sull'esercizio delle professioni di fiduciario ). Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrom cantonal to federal supervision: the turning point of 2020
When the Federal Council set 1 January 2020 as the date of entry into force of FinSA, FinIA and their ordinances, it also decided the fate of the cantonal financial fiduciary. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe consequences for the profession
The transfer had a visible effect on the institutions of the profession. The cantonal selfregulatory organisation for money laundering, the OAD FCT, had reached about 550 members at its peak and had… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFinSA and FinIA: the federal architecture
Until the end of 2019 an independent asset manager in Switzerland needed no prudential licence. Federal law reached him through two channels only. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe licensing cascade and its exceptions
Article 2 paragraph 1 FinIA lists five types of financial institution: portfolio managers, trustees, managers of collective assets, fund management companies and securities firms. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe licence of the portfolio manager: Articles 17 to 24 FinIA
A portfolio manager under FinIA is anyone who, on a commercial basis, can dispose of the assets of clients in their name and on their behalf (Art. 17 para. 1 FinIA). Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayOrganization, risk management and internal control
FinIA requires an adequate organization, risk management and internal control (Art. 21 FinIA). Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayManagers of collective assets and the de minimis thresholds
Several Lugano firms also manage investment funds, usually sub-funds of Luxembourg or Swiss umbrella funds for their own clients, or the pension assets of local pension schemes. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySupervisory organisations and the numbers of the transition
The legislature did not want FINMA to supervise some two thousand small firms directly. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe merger of 2025 and the controversy that followed
On 27 November 2025 FINMA approved the merger of FINcontrol Suisse AG and OSFIN. After the merger FINcontrol Suisse was renamed OSFINcontrol AG and OSFIN was dissolved. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayMoney laundering duties: from the OAD FCT to the reform of 2026
The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 10 October 1997 (AMLA, SR 955.0) brought the fiduciari of Lugano under federal law long before FinIA did. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe duty of truthfulness towards the self-regulatory organisation
The relationship between a fiduciary company and its self-regulatory organisation rests on the accuracy of the information that the company provides. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe external asset manager and the custodian bank
The business model of the independent asset manager rests on three contracts. The client concludes an asset management agreement with the manager, which is a contract of mandate under Articles 394… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayRetrocessions before the Federal Supreme Court
Until 2006 it was common for custodian banks to pay independent managers a share of the brokerage commissions and custody fees generated by their clients, and for fund providers to pay distribution… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayArticle 26 FinSA
FinSA has codified the case law for all financial service providers. Under Article 26 FinSA a provider may accept remuneration from third parties in connection with a financial service only if it has… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTrustees under FinIA and the Hague Trust Convention
Switzerland has no trust in its domestic law. Swiss civil law knows the fiduciary transfer ( negozio fiduciario ), the foundation and the contract of mandate, but not the division between legal… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe commercial basis and the family exception
The same criteria of commercial activity apply to trustees as to portfolio managers: gross revenue of more than CHF 50,000 a year, more than twenty contracting parties, or power of disposal over… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayMarket structure and consolidation
The statistics of the Canton of Ticino do not distinguish between licensed portfolio managers, trustees, fund distributors and other non-bank financial firms, but they show the weight and the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe economics of a small firm
The reasons for the limited consolidation lie in the economics of the small firm. A Lugano manager with three employees, 68 clients and CHF 140 million under management earns, at an all-in fee of… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayPractical guidance: establishing, acquiring and running an asset manager in Lugano
A new portfolio manager in Lugano must obtain its FINMA licence before it starts its activity. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayGovernance in a small firm
The governance of a three-person firm is necessarily lean, and FinIA accepts this within limits. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayServing Italian Clients from Switzerland: Market Access and Cross-Border Services — overview and summary
A relationship manager in Lugano who telephones a client in Varese, sends him a new fund factsheet or takes the train to Milan to discuss a Lombard loan performs an act that two legal orders claim to… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayWhere a cross-border financial service takes place
Financial regulation in Europe is territorial in principle and functional in application. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrom tolerance to enforcement
For about half a century the question of market access was overshadowed by banking secrecy. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe European framework for third-country firms
MiFID II, adopted on 15 May 2014 and applicable from 3 January 2018, was the first European instrument to address firms from third countries in some detail. It did so in two tiers. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySwitzerland and the politics of equivalence
The absence of an equivalence decision for Swiss investment firms has political causes. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItaly's implementation: Articles 28 and 29-ter TUF
Italian law distinguishes between third-country banks and third-country firms other than banks, and it assigns each category to a different authority. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe branch requirement for retail and professional clients
Article 28 paragraph 3 and Article 29-ter paragraph 3 TUF contain the decisive rule. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayBanking services: the TUB and the CRD VI branch requirement
Investment services are only part of what a Lugano bank provides to an Italian client. The relationship usually begins with an account, which in legal terms is the acceptance of a deposit. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItaly's transposition: Legislative Decree No. 208 of 2025
Italy transposed CRD VI by Legislative Decree No. 208 of 31 December 2025, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale No. 5 of 8 January 2026. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayReverse solicitation, marketing and the distribution of funds
Reverse solicitation is the legal space in which most of Lugano's business with Italian private clients now takes place. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayInherited relationships and the next generation
The exemption raises particular questions for the type of client that dominates Lugano's books. Many Italian relationships are decades old. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFunds: AIFMD and the TUF
The marketing of funds follows its own regime. A Swiss collective investment scheme is neither an undertaking for collective investment in transferable securities (UCITS) under Directive 2009/65/EC… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySanctions: abusive activity, tax and corporate liability
The central sanction for a Swiss provider who serves Italian clients without authorization is criminal. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayAdministrative sanctions and the supervisor's tools
Alongside the criminal law the TUF and the TUB provide administrative sanctions, imposed by CONSOB or the Banca d'Italia, for breaches of the rules on authorization and conduct. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe tax dimension: the hidden permanent establishment
The most expensive sanction in recent practice has been fiscal. Under Article 162 of the Consolidated Income Tax Act ( Testo unico delle imposte sui redditi, TUIR) and Article 5 of the Swiss-Italian… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe enforcement record: Italian investigations of Swiss banks and bankers
The first visible sign that Italy would enforce its rules against Swiss banks came during the third tax amnesty, the scudo fiscale of 2009, which Chapter E.II describes. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCredit Suisse and the insurance wrappers, 2016
In March 2016 the public prosecutor's office in Milan opened an investigation into Credit Suisse concerning the alleged use of insurance policies to conceal the assets of Italian clients from the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Swiss side: FINMA, country manuals and the FinSA
Swiss supervisory law does not leave the compliance of Swiss banks with foreign law to the foreign state. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTravel rules for relationship managers
The most practical part of the country manual is the travel policy. Before the end of banking secrecy, many Lugano relationship managers travelled to Italy regularly to see clients, and some of them… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe inverse case: Article 28 FinSA and the reciprocity clause
Swiss law treats foreign providers who serve clients in Switzerland more openly than Italy treats Swiss providers. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFrontalieri, branches and alternative structures
A distinctive feature of Lugano banking is that many of the relationship managers who serve Italian clients are themselves Italian residents. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian branches and subsidiaries of Swiss banks
The direct answer to the branch requirement is a branch, and the large Swiss groups have built Italian establishments. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe politics of market access: from the Roadmap to the Switzerland–EU package
On 23 February 2015 Switzerland and Italy signed in Milan a Roadmap on fiscal and financial matters, together with the Protocol amending the double taxation convention. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Switzerland–EU package and financial services
At the European level, the decisive development of the period was the package of agreements between Switzerland and the European Union, often called the Bilaterals III. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayA practitioner's checklist for Italian relationships
The first task in reviewing a book of Italian clients is classification. Each relationship must be assigned to one of the categories that Italian and European law distinguish, because the category… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayConduct rules for the relationship manager
The relationship manager is the person most exposed to Italian criminal law. His conduct must therefore be governed by clear and enforced rules. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian Families, Succession and Residence: Trusts, Foundations and Lump-Sum Taxation — overview and summary
For most of the twentieth century the Italian family that banked in Lugano asked its adviser for one thing above all: that the account should remain invisible to the Italian state. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian families as clients of the Lugano centre
The modern Lugano private banking market was built on Italian deposits, many of them undeclared. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThree legal orders around one family
In practice three bodies of law determine the outcome of a cross-border Italian succession. The first is Italian substantive law. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian succession law and the reserved share
Italian succession law belongs to the Roman and French tradition of forced heirship. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe prohibition of agreements on future successions
The second feature of Italian succession law that shapes planning is the prohibition of agreements on succession. Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayReform proposals and the Swiss comparison
Italian scholars and notaries have long argued that the system is too rigid for modern families and businesses. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayItalian inheritance and gift tax after the reform of 2024
By European standards Italy taxes inheritances within the family lightly. After its abolition in 2001 the tax was reintroduced in 2006 with high allowances and low rates, in a structure that has… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayDouble taxation without a treaty
Since there is no Swiss-Italian treaty on inheritance taxes, double taxation is avoided only by unilateral rules. Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayExemptions for business transfers
The most important exemption for entrepreneurial families is that for the transfer of businesses and shareholdings to descendants and to the spouse. Under Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCross-border succession: the European Regulation and the revised PILA
Since 17 August 2015 Italian courts and notaries have determined the law applicable to a succession under Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 (the… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Swiss rules after 1 January 2025
Swiss private international law of succession is contained in Art. 86 to 96 PILA. These provisions were revised by an amending act of 22 December 2023, which the Federal Council brought into force on… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTypical constellations for Italians in Ticino
The first typical case is that of an Italian national who has moved to Lugano and wishes his or her estate to be governed by Swiss law. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTrusts between Italian and Swiss law
Neither Italy nor Switzerland has a domestic law of trusts in the common law sense. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Italian income tax treatment of trusts
Italian income tax law has treated trusts as taxpayers since the Budget Act for 2007. Under Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayIndirect taxes and the reform of 2024
The inheritance and gift tax treatment of trusts was for years one of the most contested areas of Italian tax law. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayFoundations: Swiss restrictions and the Liechtenstein alternative
Families who want a permanent vehicle under a civil law tradition often ask for a foundation. Swiss law offers one, but with restrictions that have made it unattractive for most wealth planning. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe Liechtenstein foundation
The Liechtenstein foundation is the classical alternative. It is governed by Art. 552 ff. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayMoving to Ticino: permits and the Italian residence test
For an Italian national the right to live in Ticino follows from the Agreement of 21 June 1999 between Switzerland and the European Community and its member states on the free movement of persons… Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodaySwitzerland and the Italian blacklist
Until 2023 a further rule made the move to Switzerland particularly difficult. Under Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayTicino's taxes on wealthy residents
Chapter B.II has explained the federal framework of taxation according to expenditure ( imposizione secondo il dispendio ). It covered the conditions of Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe wealth tax
Ticino levies a progressive cantonal wealth tax on net wealth, to which the communes add their own share through their communal multiplier. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe reverse flow: Italy's regimes for new residents
For most of the twentieth century wealth moved from Italy to Ticino. Since 2017 Italy has competed for the same clients with its own regime for wealthy immigrants. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayThe impatriate regime
The second Italian instrument targets people who work. With effect from 2024 Legislative Decree No 209 of 27 December 2023 replaced the earlier regime for impatriate workers of Art. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCase studies and a practitioner's checklist
The following cases are hypothetical and anonymised. They combine features that recur in practice and are intended to show how the rules described in this chapter interact. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCase 2: the widow in Milan with a trust
B, an Italian resident living in Milan, settled a discretionary trust governed by Jersey law with a Lugano trustee twenty years ago, with assets held at a Lugano bank. Read more Lugano · Private Banking and Wealth Management TodayCase 4: the family that returns to Milan
D, an Italian national, has lived in Lugano for twelve years under taxation according to expenditure. Her investment income is almost entirely from non-Italian sources. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubFrom Transit Trade to Trading Houses: The Rise of Commodity Trading in Lugano — overview and summary
In 2024 the commodity trading companies of Switzerland produced a gross value added of CHF 19.2 billion, about 2.3 per cent of the value added of the whole Swiss economy. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhat a trading house does and how Switzerland counts it
A physical commodity trader buys a raw material or a semi-finished product in one place and sells it in another, at another time or in another form, and earns the difference between purchase and sale… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe long series
The SNB merchanting series is the only long time series on the Swiss trading industry. Its trajectory forms the background against which the rise of Lugano must be read. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubFrom the Gotthard road to the forwarding houses of Chiasso
For most of its history the territory of today's Ticino lived from transit in the physical sense: from the carriage, storage, taxation and sale of goods that crossed the Alps between Lombardy and the… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhy the forwarders did not become traders
The step from forwarding to trading is short in theory and long in practice. A forwarder acts for the account of others and earns a fee. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe national rise of merchanting and the making of the Lugano cluster
The modern Swiss trading industry was formed in the three decades after the Second World War, and Lugano entered it late. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhat Lugano offered: banks, fiduciaries and gold
Lugano's specific attractions for trading firms grew out of the financial centre described in Parts D and E. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubAfter 1991: the eastern opening
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened the steel and raw materials industries of Russia and Ukraine to Western traders, and Lugano's steel specialists were among the first to use the… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubSteel and metals: the core of the Lugano cluster
Every source on the Lugano cluster agrees that metals, and steel in particular, form its centre. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe trading arms of Russian and Ukrainian producers
The second group of steel traders in Lugano consists of the marketing companies of producers from the former Soviet Union. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubHow a Lugano steel trade works
A typical transaction illustrates what a Lugano steel trader does. The trader agrees with a mill in Turkey, India or Vietnam to buy 20,000 tonnes of hot-rolled coil on CFR terms (cost and freight to… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubEnergy, coal, agricultural products and gold
The second largest segment of the Ticino cluster after metals is energy. In 2021 the Federal Statistical Office counted 27 Ticino firms trading fuels, with 243 employees. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubAgricultural commodities: a small segment
Agricultural commodities form only a small part of the Ticino cluster. The national statistics count 83 agricultural trading firms with 1,074 employees in 2021, most of them in the Lake Geneva… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Lugano Commodity Trading Association
The Lugano Commodity Trading Association (LCTA) was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit association with its seat in Lugano. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Global Commodities Conference and the roundtables
The association's main public event is the Global Commodities Conference (GCC). Its editions are listed for 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubCounting the Lugano cluster: firms, jobs, value added and taxes
Before the Federal Statistical Office published cantonal data, the size of the Lugano trading cluster was known only from estimates that the association, the city and the canton gave to the press. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubValue added and the share of cantonal GDP
The value added estimate for 2024 allows a first official answer to the question of the cluster's economic weight. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe ecosystem: banks, inspectors, shippers, insurers and advisers
A trading house cannot exist without a bank that finances its cargoes. The typical Lugano trader works with transactional finance: the bank opens documentary credits for purchases, finances the goods… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubShipping, shipbroking and logistics
Since ocean freight is part of almost every trade, many traders charter vessels themselves. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe shock of 2022: war, sanctions and record profits
No Swiss trading hub was as exposed to Russia and Ukraine as Lugano. Its steel traders bought semi-finished and flat products from mills in both countries, several of the largest firms were the… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubSanctions as a permanent condition
After 2022 sanctions compliance became a permanent condition of commodity trading in Lugano. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubGeneva, Zug and Lugano compared
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,… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubCompetition beyond Switzerland
The three Swiss hubs compete with London, Singapore, Dubai and, for some products, Rotterdam and Hamburg. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubFederal policy from the commodity report of 2013 to the statistics mandate of 2023
Until the early 2010s the Swiss commodity sector was hardly the subject of federal policy. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubTransparency and due diligence in company law
The policy debate led to two sets of rules in the Code of Obligations. Since 1 January 2021 companies subject to an ordinary audit that are active in the extraction of minerals, oil, natural gas or… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe line to today's practice
For the practitioner advising a trading company in Lugano, federal policy since 2013 has three practical consequences. First, the company will be counted. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Law of the Trading House: Contracts, Taxation and Substance — overview and summary
Consider a steel trader in Lugano who buys hot-rolled coil from a mill in Turkey, sells it to a service centre in Lombardy and hedges the price on a futures exchange. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubLegal forms and group structures
Most trading houses in Ticino are organized as companies limited by shares ( società anonima, SA; Aktiengesellschaft, AG) under Articles 620 ff. of the Code of Obligations (CO). Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubHolding structures and the group
A trading group with Ticinese roots typically consists of a Swiss operating company, which employs the traders and concludes the contracts, and a holding company that owns it and often other… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubGovernance and the duties of the board
The board of directors of a Swiss company limited by shares may delegate the management of the business to managers or to individual members. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe company law reform of 2023
The revision of company law adopted by Parliament on 19 June 2020 and in force since 1 January 2023 changed several rules that matter for trading houses. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Swiss tax framework after TRAF
Until the end of 2019 Swiss corporate tax law offered trading groups a set of cantonal and federal practices that made Switzerland one of the most attractive locations for commodity trading in the… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubTransitional rules: the step-up and the special rate
The abolition of the privileged regimes raised the question of how to treat hidden reserves that had accumulated under them. Two transitional mechanisms were available. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubTicino's cantonal taxation and the rates in Lugano
Ticino began to prepare for the end of the privileged regimes before the federal reform was complete. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe communal multiplier and the rate in Lugano
The effective rate in a Ticinese commune depends on the communal multiplier ( moltiplicatore d'imposta comunale ), which each commune fixes annually as a percentage of the basic cantonal tax. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe OECD minimum tax in Switzerland
The second pillar of the OECD/G20 project on the taxation of the digital economy was agreed in October 2021. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhat the minimum tax means for trading houses in Lugano
For the large majority of trading companies in Ticino the minimum tax is irrelevant, because their groups do not reach the threshold of EUR 750 million in consolidated revenue. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubTransfer pricing for trading functions
Swiss tax law contains no general transfer pricing statute comparable to the detailed rules of Germany, Italy or the United States. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubFunctions, risks and the margin of the trader
The CUP method determines the price of the commodity, but it does not by itself answer the question of how much profit the Swiss trading company may keep. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubItalian rules: controlled foreign companies, residence and withholding tax
A trading company in Lugano owned by an Italian resident, whether an individual or a company, falls within the scope of the Italian rules on controlled foreign companies (CFC) in Article 167 TUIR. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe exemption for genuine economic activity
Even where both conditions of paragraph 4 are met, the controlling person may escape the CFC rules. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubPermanent establishment and the treaty tie-breaker
Where the Swiss company is not resident in Italy, Italian tax may still apply through a permanent establishment. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe trading contract: sales law, standard forms, documents and hedging
When a Lugano trader contracts under Swiss law, two bodies of rules may apply. One is the domestic law of sale in Articles 184 ff. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubIncoterms 2020
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) published Incoterms 2020, which apply to contracts that incorporate them from 1 January 2020. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubBills of lading, letters of indemnity and demurrage
The bill of lading is the central document of seaborne commodity trading. It is a receipt for the goods, evidence of the contract of carriage and a document of title that allows the holder to claim… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubHedging and the ISDA framework
Most trading houses hedge their price risk on futures exchanges such as the London Metal Exchange, ICE and CME, through over-the-counter swaps with banks or through options. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubDispute resolution: Swiss arbitration, London and enforcement
International arbitration with its seat in Switzerland is governed by Chapter 12 of the Federal Act on Private International Law of 18 December 1987 (PILA). Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe choice of seat: Lugano, Zurich or Geneva
The seat of arbitration determines the state court competent to support the arbitration and the law on setting aside. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubEnforcement under the New York Convention
Switzerland is a party to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 10 June 1958 (New York Convention). Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubSubstance, due diligence and transparency
The Federal Council first examined the commodity sector as a whole in its background report of 27 March 2013, prepared by the departments of foreign affairs, finance and economic affairs. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubDue diligence on conflict minerals and child labour
The popular initiative "For responsible businesses – protecting human rights and the environment" (Responsible Business Initiative) was put to the vote on 29 November 2020. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhat the due diligence rules mean for Lugano traders
For most commodity traders in Lugano the Swiss due diligence rules have limited direct application. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubA practitioner's checklist for a trading company in Lugano
The establishment of a trading company in Lugano combines company law, tax, Italian law and banking requirements, and the order in which the questions are answered matters. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubOperations, contracts and compliance
The operational set-up determines whether the company has the substance that the tax analysis presupposes. The checklist below, which follows the order of this chapter, summarizes the minimum. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubLogistics, Shipping and the Fashion Valley: Ticino's Distribution Economy — overview and summary
Between the motorway exit at Mendrisio and the customs post at Chiasso-Brogeda lies a strip of land of a few square kilometres. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubMeasuring the distribution economy
The word distribution covers several business models that share a location and a workforce but differ in law. The first is the principal or entrepreneur company. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe press and research estimates
For the cluster as a whole the most frequently cited figures come from industry and press sources. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe rise of the Fashion Valley
The clothing industry of the Mendrisiotto is older than the Fashion Valley. At the beginning of the twentieth century the southern district of Ticino counted, according to the figures collected by… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubVF Corporation in Stabio
The most durable member of the cluster has proved to be the American VF Corporation, owner of The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Napapijri, Dickies and other outdoor and sportswear brands. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhy Ticino: tax, production, workforce and logistics
The companies that settled in the Fashion Valley never concealed that taxation was one of their reasons. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe frontalieri
The third factor was the workforce. In the fourth quarter of 2012 Ticino counted 55,554 frontalieri, of whom 16,406 worked in industry, 9,416 in commerce and 8,229 in construction. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Kering case: Gucci, LGI and the Italian tax authorities
The structure that the Italian authorities examined can be reconstructed from the public reports of the investigation and from Kering's own statements. Guccio Gucci S.p.A. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe legal instruments
The procedure of accertamento con adesione is governed by Legislative Decree no. 218 of 19 June 1997. It allows the taxpayer and the tax office to agree on the amount of an assessment. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubOther fashion groups before the Italian courts
The Kering case was the largest of a series of Italian proceedings against fashion groups whose foreign companies were alleged to be managed from Italy. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubDepartures, low wages and the political debate
The withdrawal of Kering from Ticino took eight years and proceeded in four stages. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe question of wages
The departures fed a debate that had accompanied the Fashion Valley from the beginning. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Chiasso-Stabio-Mendrisio logistics belt and the Gotthard corridor
The logistics belt of the Mendrisiotto owes its existence to the Gotthard railway, whose history Chapter C.III describes. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubStabio and Mendrisio
The logistics sites of the fashion groups lay mostly in the municipalities around Chiasso, in Stabio, Coldrerio, Mendrisio, Novazzano and Balerna. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubCustoms warehouses, free zones and the reforms after 2014
Swiss customs law allows foreign goods to remain in Switzerland without paying import duties and import VAT as long as they are placed under a suspensive procedure. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubFree zones and the comparison with Geneva
Free zones differ from open customs warehouses in that they are enclosed areas in which goods of many depositors are stored under the general supervision of the customs office. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubOther legal regimes that reach stored goods
Several other statutes apply to goods stored under customs suspension. The Cultural Property Transfer Act treats the storage of cultural property in a customs warehouse as an import, so that the… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubShipping, ship management and marine insurance
Switzerland is a landlocked country whose companies control a significant share of the world's merchant fleet. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe Swiss flag: the Federal Act of 1953
Ships owned by Swiss companies may fly the Swiss flag under the Federal Act on Navigation under the Swiss Flag of 23 September 1953 (Maritime Navigation Act), SR 747.30. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubMarine insurance and the maritime services cluster
Marine insurance in Lugano is mainly a matter of cargo insurance for traders and of brokerage. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubTax, substance and reputational risk of distribution structures
A Swiss distribution or trading company that buys goods from an Italian group company and resells them abroad faces three distinct lines of attack from the Italian tax authorities. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubThe permanent establishment in Italy
Article 162 TUIR was amended in 2017 to follow the BEPS recommendations. A nonresident enterprise has a permanent establishment in Italy if it carries on its business there through a fixed place of… Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubDAC6 and mandatory disclosure
Since 2020 cross-border tax arrangements involving Italy may also have to be reported to the Italian Revenue Agency under the EU directive on mandatory disclosure (DAC6). Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubA practitioner's checklist for distribution structures in Ticino
The experience of the Fashion Valley yields a set of questions that advisers should ask before a group places trading, distribution or logistics functions in Ticino. The first question is functional. Read more Lugano · Lugano as a Commodity Trading HubWhen the structure is challenged
When the Italian authorities open an audit or a criminal investigation, the response must coordinate tax, criminal and Swiss law. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyTrade Finance in Lugano: Banks, Instruments and Risks — overview and summary
A steel trader in Lugano who buys a cargo of billets in Turkey and sells it to a mill in Lombardy rarely pays for the goods with its own money. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe trade finance market in Switzerland and in Lugano
The term trade finance covers every form of credit, payment security and risk transfer that a bank or insurer provides in connection with the movement of goods. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe banks that serve Lugano
The banks represented on the executive committee of the Lugano Commodity Trading Association give a fair picture of who finances the cluster. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDocumentary credits under UCP 600 and Swiss law
A documentary credit, also called a letter of credit, is an undertaking by a bank to pay the seller of goods a stated sum against the presentation of stipulated documents within a stated period. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyInternational standard banking practice: ISBP 821
The phrase "international standard banking practice" in Article 2 UCP 600 refers above all to the ICC's publication International Standard Banking Practice for the Examination of Documents under UCP… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyStrict compliance in a Swiss steel case
The decision of the Federal Supreme Court of 9 November 2006 in case 4C.393/2005 is a lesson for every steel trader. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDocumentary collections, bills of lading and the control of the goods
A documentary collection is a cheaper and weaker instrument than a credit. The seller ships the goods and hands the documents to its bank, the remitting bank, with instructions to deliver them to the… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyLetters of indemnity and the bank's exposure
When the original bills are not available at discharge, the shipowner delivers the cargo against a letter of indemnity (LOI) from the charterer or the seller, typically on the standard forms of the… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDemand guarantees, standby letters of credit and Article 111 CO
Guarantees enter the life of a trading house in several forms. A buyer that pays in advance for a cargo of steel asks for an advance payment guarantee, which secures repayment if the trader fails to… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyISP98 and the standby letter of credit
The standby letter of credit is an American invention. Because United States banks were historically not permitted to issue guarantees, they issued letters of credit payable against a statement of… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe abusive call in Swiss case law
The doctrine of the abusive call ( rechtsmissbräuchlicher Abruf) is the Swiss counterpart of the fraud exception in English and American law. Its elements have been settled for decades. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyStructured and transactional commodity finance
The instruments described so far secure payment. Commodity finance in the narrower sense finances the trader's working capital during the cycle from purchase to sale. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyPre-export finance and prepayment
Pre-export finance (PXF) and prepayment finance turn the trader into a lender to the producer. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyReceivables finance, forfaiting, risk participation and credit insurance
A trader that sells on open account can finance its receivables by selling them to a bank or factor. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe frauds of 2020 and the retreat of the banks
The year 2020 was the worst in the modern history of commodity trade finance. The collapse of oil prices in March and April 2020, when the pandemic halted demand, exposed losses and frauds that had… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAgritrade International
Agritrade International, a Singapore trader in coal and palm oil, collapsed in early 2020 with liabilities of about USD 1.5 billion to some 15 banks. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySupervision, industry standards and capital rules
Swiss banking law contains no special rules for commodity trade finance. A bank that finances traders is subject to the general requirements of the Banking Act and the Banking Ordinance on… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyIndustry standards: the STSA guide and the Wolfsberg principles
In the absence of a regulatory text, two private standards define good practice for banks that finance Lugano traders. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyTrade-based money laundering and the screening of vessels and documents
Trade-based money laundering (TBML) is the use of trade transactions to move value across borders and disguise its criminal origin. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySanctions screening of parties, vessels and goods
Sanctions are the second compliance dimension of every trade finance transaction. A bank that opens a documentary credit must screen the applicant, the beneficiary, the banks involved, the vessel,… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDigital trade documents: MLETR, eUCP and Swiss ledger-based securities
The documentary system rests on the paper original. A bill of lading can be transferred only by delivering the paper with any necessary endorsement, and a bank can hold it as security only if it… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySwiss law: ledger-based securities and the bill of lading
Switzerland chose a different route. It did not enact the Model Law. Instead, the Federal Act of 25 September 2020 on the Adaptation of Federal Law to Developments in Distributed Ledger Technology… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyPlatforms: the rise and fall of the consortia
The legal reforms came after a wave of technological optimism had already broken. Between 2017 and 2019 banks and traders founded several consortia to digitize trade finance on distributed ledgers. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyA practitioner's checklist for a Lugano trader's banking relationship
A trading house in Lugano that seeks trade finance should prepare the relationship as carefully as it prepares a major sale. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyLiving with the bank
Once the facility is in place, the relationship depends on transparency. A trader should inform its bank promptly of disputes with counterparties, of cargoes delayed or rejected and of losses on… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySanctions and Export Controls at the Southern Border — overview and summary
On 24 February 2022 the steel traders of Lugano woke up to a war that concerned them more directly than any other Swiss financial centre. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Embargo Act and its constitutional setting
Switzerland applied economic sanctions long before it had a statute for them. When the Security Council of the United Nations imposed an embargo on Iraq in August 1990, the Federal Council adopted… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyNeutrality and the decision of 28 February 2022
The decisive change came with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Switzerland had not adopted the sanctions of the European Union. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Ukraine Ordinance and the adoption of the European packages
The listings of 28 February 2022 were made under the old ordinance of 2014, which had been designed to prevent circumvention and was too narrow for the measures that followed. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAdopting the packages: a chronology
The following table summarizes the main steps of the Swiss adoption of the European measures. It is selective and records the measures that matter most for traders, banks and fiduciaries in Ticino. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyWhere Switzerland goes its own way
The adoption has never been complete. When it implemented the eighth package in November 2022, Switzerland extended the arms embargo partly to Ukraine, because the law of neutrality requires equal… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyTrade measures and the commodity trader
For Lugano no measure has had a greater effect than the ban on Russian iron and steel. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCoal and other economically significant goods
The fifth European package of 8 April 2022 prohibited the purchase, import and transfer of coal and other solid fossil fuels from Russia. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyGold, diamonds and the Ticino refineries
Three of the four large Swiss gold refineries are located in the Mendrisiotto and the Sottoceneri: Valcambi in Balerna, PAMP in Castel San Pietro and Argor-Heraeus in Mendrisio. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyFinancial measures: freezes, deposits, services and trusts
The asset freeze is the oldest and most familiar instrument. Article 15 of the Ukraine Ordinance freezes the funds and economic resources owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the natural… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDeposits, securities and Kryptowerte und Digital Assets
Beyond the freeze of listed persons, the ordinance restricts the business of Swiss banks with Russian clients in general. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyEnforcement in Switzerland: SECO, customs, prosecutors and courts
Switzerland has no sanctions agency comparable to the American Office of Foreign Assets Control. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Office of the Attorney General and federal jurisdiction
For serious cases Article 14 paragraph 2 EmbA opens a second track. If the criminal provisions of the Act apply, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland "may at the request of the relevant… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe record so far
The enforcement record shows many small cases and very few large ones. The following table summarizes the figures that SECO has communicated or that have been reported on the basis of its information. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyLugano's traders under sanctions
Chapter F.I has described how the opening of the former Soviet economies after 1991 brought the export companies of the large Russian steel groups to Ticino. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyPolitical and public reactions in Ticino
The presence of these companies became a political issue. On 15 April 2022 the Movimento per il socialismo (MPS) filed an interpellation in the Grand Council of the Canton of Ticino that named MMK… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyBanks, credit lines and the market shock of 2022
The economic shock came before the legal one. The reporting of March 2022 counted 123 commodity trading companies in Ticino, 51 of them specialized in minerals and metals with 575 employees, and… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAcross the border: European law and Italian enforcement
The European sanctions against Russia rest on two regulations of 2014, both adopted after the annexation of Crimea and amended by every package since 2022. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyYachts and villas: the Italian freezes
The Italian freezes became internationally known through the yachts and villas of Russian billionaires on the Ligurian and Sardinian coasts. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe "no Russia clause" and the Swiss exporter
Article 12g of Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, inserted by Council Regulation (EU) 2023/2878 of 18 December 2023, requires exporters in the Union to prohibit by contract the re-exportation to Russia,… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe United States and secondary sanctions
Neither Switzerland nor Italy is bound by American sanctions law. A Lugano trader that has no American employee, no American customer and no American goods might believe that the rules of the Office… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyExecutive Order 14114 and foreign financial institutions
The most important American measure for Swiss banks came on 22 December 2023. Executive Order 14114 authorized OFAC to impose full blocking sanctions on foreign financial institutions, or to prohibit… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyExport controls: dual-use goods, war material and the customs at Chiasso
Sanctions are directed against particular states and persons. Export controls apply to particular goods, whatever their destination. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe European dual-use regime and Italy
On the Italian side the corresponding rules are those of Regulation (EU) 2021/821 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2021, the recast dual-use regulation, which has applied since… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyChiasso and the customs at the southern border
The physical front line of sanctions and export controls in Ticino is the customs. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyA compliance programme for a Ticino trader or bank
No Swiss statute prescribes the content of a sanctions compliance programme for a trading company. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyContracts: sanctions clauses, re-export clauses and disputes
Contracts are the second line of defence. Since 2022 trading contracts in Lugano contain sanctions clauses that allocate the risk of new measures. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyOrganized Crime, Money Laundering and the Ticino Front Line — overview and summary
On 31 August 2026 the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona opened the trial of a 59year-old man. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Anti-Money Laundering Act in 2026: architecture and supervision
The Federal Act on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing of 10 October 1997 (Anti-Money Laundering Act, AMLA), SR 955.0, applies to two groups of persons. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe due diligence duties
The due diligence duties of Articles 3 to 8 AMLA are the core of the preventive system. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySelf-regulation and FINMA's expectations
Below the statute stand the ordinances and the self-regulation. For banks, the Agreement on the Swiss banks' code of conduct with regard to the exercise of due diligence (CDB 20) defines the details… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyReporting to the MROS: law, statistics and the Ticino share
Chapter D.IV described how the right to report of 1994 and the duty to report of 1997 came into being. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyWho reports and on what grounds
The banks account for the overwhelming majority of reports. In 2024 they filed 92.3 per cent (13,973 reports). Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Ticino share: prosecution authorities
The second Ticino figure concerns the prosecution authorities that receive forwarded cases. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe criminal law in application: Articles 305bis, 305ter, 260ter and 102 SCC
Article 305bis SCC punishes any person who carries out an act that is aimed at frustrating the identification of the origin, the tracing or the forfeiture of assets which he knows or must assume… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyInsufficient diligence: Article 305ter SCC
Article 305ter(1) SCC punishes any person who, as part of his profession, accepts, holds on deposit or assists in investing or transferring assets belonging to others and fails to ascertain the… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCorporate liability in practice
Article 102 SCC makes an undertaking liable for a felony or misdemeanour committed in the exercise of commercial activities if the offence cannot be attributed to a specific natural person because of… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Italian Mafia organizations in Switzerland: the official threat picture
The Federal Office of Police (fedpol) has described the presence of Italian Mafia organizations in Switzerland in consistent terms for more than a decade. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySwiss convictions for membership
Swiss courts have nevertheless convicted members of the 'Ndrangheta. On 20 January 2020 the Federal Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a 62-year-old Italian resident of the Bernese Seeland,… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Ticino front line: cases from 2000 to 2026
The following cases are reconstructed from judgments as reported in the press and from official statements. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe trusted man of Vacallo: the judgment of 29 December 2017
The case that most clearly links laundering, logistics and the Mendrisiotto was decided by the Federal Criminal Court on 29 December 2017. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCavalli di razza and the Molè clan (2021–2024)
In November 2021 the DDA of Milan, together with prosecutors in Florence and Reggio Calabria, ordered more than one hundred arrests in the operation known as Cavalli di razza. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe institutions: Ticino prosecutors, the federal prosecutor in Lugano and the court in Bellinzona
The division of labour between the cantonal and federal prosecution authorities determines who handles a money laundering or Mafia case arising in Ticino. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Office of the Attorney General and its Lugano office
The OAG is organized by type of crime. One division handles state protection and criminal organizations, another economic crime, which covers general economic crime, money laundering and… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCooperation across the border: Como, Milan, Reggio Calabria and Catanzaro
The Italian side of the Ticino front line is organized differently from the Swiss side. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyPolice and customs cooperation
Below the level of judicial assistance, police cooperation runs through a bilateral agreement on police and customs cooperation concluded in 2013 and through the joint Police and Customs Cooperation… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencySectors at risk: fiduciaries, domiciliary companies, real estate, cash and gold
Switzerland's national risk assessments provide the official baseline for the risk-based approach. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyFiduciaries and the cantonal licence
Ticino is the only canton that subjects the fiduciary professions to a cantonal licence, under the Law on the Exercise of the Fiduciary Professions (LFid) described in Chapter E.III. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyGold refiners and precious metals dealers
The three large refineries of the Mendrisiotto, Valcambi in Balerna, Argor-Heraeus in Mendrisio and PAMP in Castel San Pietro, are described in Chapter F.I. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe FATF evaluation and the reform of 2025–2026
The Financial Action Task Force evaluates its members in rounds of mutual evaluations that assess both technical compliance with the forty FATF Recommendations and the effectiveness of the national… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe legislative process
On 30 August 2023 the Federal Council opened the consultation on a federal register of beneficial owners and on due diligence duties for high-risk advisory activities. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAdvisers under the AMLA
The second element of the reform extends the AMLA to advisers who carry out certain high-risk activities without handling client assets. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCase typologies and a practitioner's checklist
The following typologies are anonymized composites. They are drawn from the cases described in this chapter, from the sectors listed by the MROS and from the risk factors identified in the national… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyTypology 3: the trusted helper
A former employee of a municipal administration in the Mendrisiotto, now working as an independent consultant, prepares applications for residence permits, company registrations and real estate… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyTransparency, Tax Cooperation and Beneficial Ownership — overview and summary
On 1 October 2026 two federal statutes entered into force that change the daily work of every company formation agent, fiduciary and lawyer in Lugano. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyFrom bearer shares to beneficial owners
For most of the twentieth century the bearer share ( Inhaberaktie, azione al portatore) was the ordinary instrument of the Ticino holding company. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Global Forum Act of 2019
The second break was the Federal Act of 21 June 2019 implementing the recommendations of the Global Forum, which entered into force on 1 November 2019. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Global Forum and the peer reviews of Switzerland
The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes is the body, hosted by the OECD, that monitors the implementation of two international standards: exchange of information… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyWhat the figures show
The report of 2020 gives a rare statistical picture of Swiss administrative assistance. In the three years from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2018 Switzerland received 3,252 individual requests. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Transparency Act and the federal register
The Federal Council opened the consultation on a federal transparency register in August 2023, which ran until November 2023, and adopted its dispatch in May 2024 under the parliamentary number… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyReporting duties and the simplified procedure
The duty to report lies with the legal entity, and within it with the most senior member of the managing body. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe register, access and control
The register is kept electronically by the Federal Office of Justice in Bern. It is not public. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAdvisers, lawyers and the limits of professional secrecy
The second statute that entered into force on 1 October 2026 is the revised Anti-Money Laundering Act. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyProfessional secrecy under Swiss law
The professional secrecy of the lawyer rests on two provisions. Art. 321 SCC punishes lawyers, defence counsel, notaries and their auxiliaries who disclose secrets confided to them in their… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe automatic exchange of financial account information and FATCA
Chapter E.II traced how Switzerland adopted the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), why it chose to collect data from 2017 and to exchange them from 2018, and how the Agenzia delle Entrate uses the… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe amendments of 2026
On 1 January 2026 amendments to the CRS adopted by the OECD in 2023 took effect in Switzerland, together with the legal basis for the exchange on Kryptowerte und Digital Assets discussed in the next… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyKryptowerte und Digital Assets: CARF, DAC8 and the Italian rules
The Common Reporting Standard was designed for accounts held with banks, custodians and funds. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyDAC8 and the Italian transposition
In the European Union the CARF was implemented through Directive (EU) 2023/2226 of 17 October 2023 (DAC8), which also introduced the CRS amendments, extended the exchange of advance cross-border… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyRulings, country-by-country reports and the minimum tax
Corporate taxpayers were drawn into the exchange of information through the OECD project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyPillar Two and the GloBE Information Return
The global minimum tax under Pillar Two of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework added a further exchange. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyAdministrative assistance and criminal tax law on both sides of the border
The exchange of information on request remains the instrument of choice when a tax authority investigates a specific taxpayer or group. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyItalian criminal tax law: Legislative Decree No. 74 of 2000
Italian criminal tax law is codified in Legislative Decree No. 74 of 10 March 2000. It distinguishes offences in the declaration from offences in the payment and collection of taxes. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyCriminal assistance between Switzerland and Italy
When the Italian authorities investigate a tax crime they can choose between two channels. Administrative assistance is requested by the Agenzia delle Entrate under Art. 27 of the convention. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe Italian side: monitoring, beneficial owners and the register
The Italian system of fiscal monitoring ( monitoraggio fiscale) introduced by Decree- Law No. 167 of 28 June 1990 rests on two pillars. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyThe reference to the Court of Justice and its judgment of 2026
On 15 October 2024 the Sixth Section of the Council of State referred six questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyConsequences for Swiss structures with Italian owners
For a Lugano practitioner the Italian register matters in three situations. The first is the Italian company or trust with a Swiss beneficial owner, such as a Ticino resident who owns an Italian… Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyA roadmap for clients with an Italian nexus
The first task in any Swiss-Italian mandate is to draw the structure as the authorities of both states will see it. Read more Lugano · Trade Finance, Sanctions, Anti-Money Laundering and TransparencyConsistency as the governing principle
The decisive practical point is consistency. Every piece of information that a client or his advisers give to one authority will sooner or later be compared with what has been given to another. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Insubric Economy: Milan, Lugano and the Cross-Border Region — overview and summary
In the second quarter of 2026 the Canton of Ticino counted 79,121 cross-border commuters, persons who live in Italy and cross the border to work in the canton. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Insubric space and its institutions
The word Insubria goes back to the Insubres, a Celtic people from Transalpine Gaul who settled from about the fifth century BC in the plain between the Ticino river and Lake Como and whose principal… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe border provinces
The Italian side of the border is prosperous and industrial. The province of Varese, which reaches from Lake Maggiore to the western shore of Lake Lugano, is one of the most industrialized areas of… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyInterreg Italia–Svizzera
The second institution of cross-border cooperation is financial. Since the 1990s the European Union's programmes of European Territorial Cooperation have included a programme for the Italian–Swiss… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyLombardy and Milan: the economic hinterland
Lombardy is the economic heart of Italy. Its gross domestic product amounted to EUR 480.6 billion in 2023, about one fifth of the Italian total, and Il Sole 24 Ore calculated that the region alone… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyMilan as a financial centre
Milan is the financial capital of Italy. It is the seat of the Italian stock exchange, of the largest Italian banking groups' operational headquarters and of most of the asset managers, insurers, law… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWhat the hinterland means for Lugano
The Lombard hinterland matters for Lugano in four ways. The first is the client base. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe frontalieri: numbers, origins and sectors
The Italian word frontaliere (German Grenzgänger, French frontalier) has two legal meanings that practitioners must keep apart. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWhere the commuters live
Almost all of Ticino's cross-border commuters live in Lombardy and Piedmont. A Federal Statistical Office series analysed by the Italian press in 2026 counted 68,371 Lombard residents among the… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWages, substitution and the wage-dumping debate
Ticino is a low-wage canton by Swiss standards and a high-wage region by Italian standards. Both facts follow from its position between two labour markets. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe instruments against wage dumping
Swiss law has three main instruments against "wage dumping", the term used in Ticinese politics for the payment of wages below the local customary level. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyFree movement and Ticino's political answer
The legal basis of today's cross-border labour market is the Agreement of 21 June 1999 between the Swiss Confederation and the European Community and its Member States on the Free Movement of Persons… Read more Lugano · Lugano and Italy"Prima i nostri"
Ticino's own answer came two years later. On 25 September 2016 the cantonal electorate accepted the popular initiative "Prima i nostri!" (Our people first), launched by the cantonal section of the… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe limitation initiative of 2020
The last test of the free movement agreement at the ballot box was the popular initiative "For moderate immigration" (limitation initiative), which demanded the termination of the agreement. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe agreement of 1974 and the ristorni
For almost half a century the taxation of Italian cross-border commuters in Ticino was governed by a short agreement of six articles: the Agreement between Switzerland and Italy on the taxation of… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe economics of the old regime
The 1974 regime had a simple economic logic and two consequences that were less simple. For the commuter, it meant that the Swiss tax at source was the only income tax on the wage. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe agreement of 23 December 2020
The Agreement between the Swiss Confederation and the Italian Republic on the taxation of cross-border workers was signed on 23 December 2020 together with a protocol amending the double taxation… Read more Lugano · Lugano and Italy"Old" and "new" cross-border workers
The political key to the agreement is the transitional regime in Art. 9. Persons who, on the date of entry into force or between 31 December 2018 and that date, were working or had worked as… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe new municipalities and the substitute tax
Because the twenty-kilometre lists of the new agreement are wider than the old lists, about seventy Italian municipalities fall within the new border zone without having been border municipalities… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe health levy and the ristorni dispute of 2026
The transitional regime of the 2020 agreement left Italy with a group of residents, the old cross-border workers, whose employment income it may not tax and who nonetheless use Italian public… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe legal questions
The dispute raises three legal questions that will occupy the authorities and possibly the courts. The first is the characterization of the levy. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalySocial security and health insurance
The social security of cross-border commuters is governed by the European rules on the coordination of social security systems, which apply between Switzerland and the European Union through Annex II… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyHealth insurance and the option right
Health insurance follows the general rule as well: a cross-border commuter working in Switzerland is in principle subject to the compulsory Swiss health insurance under the Federal Act on Health… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCampione d'Italia: an enclave between two systems
Campione d'Italia is an Italian municipality in the province of Como, situated on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano opposite the city and entirely surrounded by Swiss territory and Swiss waters. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCustoms and taxation since 2020
The legal status of Campione changed fundamentally on 1 January 2020. Until then the enclave had been part of the Swiss customs territory, under arrangements going back to the nineteenth century, and… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyInfrastructure, housing and the shape of the region
The daily movement of almost eighty thousand commuters has long been carried mainly by private cars. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyMalpensa and the airports
The international airport of the region is Malpensa, in the province of Varese, about forty kilometres from the Swiss border. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyOutlook
Three developments will shape the Insubric economy in the coming decade. The first is demographic. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyItalian Entrepreneurs in Ticino: Relocation, Exit and Residence — overview and summary
On an ordinary weekday morning the motorway from Como to Lugano carries two kinds of traffic that rarely appear in the same statistics. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWhy Italian entrepreneurs look to Ticino
The first motive that Italian entrepreneurs name is tax, although the comparison is less one-sided than the reputation of Switzerland suggests. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyProximity, language and the Lombard network
The third motive is proximity. Lugano is about 70 kilometres from the centre of Milan and, since the opening of the Ceneri base tunnel in 2020, about an hour by train. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyTicino's economic promotion and its conditions
Ticino does not simply wait for Italian businesses to arrive. Since the 1990s the canton has pursued an active economic policy, whose current instrument is the Law on Economic Innovation ( Legge per… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyFondazione AGIRE, Tecnopolo and the Innovation Park
For smaller and younger companies the canton relies on the foundation AGIRE ( Fondazione AGIRE ), which coordinates the regional innovation system. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyLeaving Italy: the residence of individuals after 2024
Italian income tax is levied on residents on their worldwide income and on nonresidents only on income produced in Italy. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyPhysical presence and the counting of days
The reform added physical presence as an independent criterion. A person who is present in Italy for the greater part of the tax period, which means 183 days or 184 in a leap year, is resident… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe presumption for emigrants and Switzerland's status
For Italian nationals who moved to Switzerland the most serious obstacle was not Article 2 paragraph 2 but paragraph 2-bis. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe falsi residenti: audits, case law and sanctions
Italian tax authorities call a person who claims a foreign residence that does not correspond to reality a falso residente (false resident). Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWhat the reform changes for these cases
The two decisions applied the old definition of domicile as the seat of business and interests. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyArriving in Ticino: permits, registration and tax domicile
For an Italian national the right to live in Ticino follows from the Agreement of 21 June 1999 between Switzerland and the European Community and its member states on the free movement of persons… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyTax domicile under federal and cantonal law
Swiss tax law defines personal tax liability by domicile or residence. Under Article 3 of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (DBG), a person has tax domicile in Switzerland if he or she… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyMoving the company: exit tax and transfer of seat
An entrepreneur who wants his business in Ticino has four basic routes. He may found a new Swiss company and let it grow while the Italian company continues and perhaps shrinks. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyImmigration under the Swiss Private International Law Act
Switzerland is among the states that accept the immigration of foreign companies. Under Article 161 of the Federal Act on Private International Law (PILA), a foreign company may subject itself to… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Swiss step-up and the problem of mismatch
Switzerland reacts to the immigration of a company with a step-up. Article 61a DBG, introduced by the TRAF of 28 September 2018, allows a company that begins Swiss tax liability to disclose its… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyNew company, branch or holding: management and permanent establishments
Most Italian entrepreneurs who bring business to Ticino do so through a new Swiss company, either an SA or a Sagl. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyPermanent establishments in both directions
A Swiss company that is managed in Switzerland may still be taxed in Italy through a permanent establishment. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe controlled foreign company rules in brief
Where an Italian resident controls a Swiss company, the Italian controlled foreign company rules of Article 167 TUIR may attribute the Swiss company's income to the Italian controlling person. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyComparing the burden: Lombardy and Ticino
A comparison of the tax burden must start from the company, because most Italian entrepreneurs who consider a move own an operating company and draw their income from it. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCapital gains, wealth and inheritance
The decisive difference lies in capital gains. Italy taxes capital gains of individuals on the sale of shares at 26 per cent. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyProperty, people and the operating business
The Federal Act on the Acquisition of Real Estate by Persons Abroad of 16 December 1983, known after Federal Councillor Arnold Koller as the Lex Koller, restricts the purchase of Swiss real estate… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWages, posted workers and local rules
Ticino protects its labour market through rules that apply to every employer, including newly arrived Italian ones. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCase studies
The following cases are hypothetical and anonymized. They combine features that recur in practice and show how the rules described in this chapter interact. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCase 3: the software founder
D, aged thirty-two, has developed a software platform for logistics companies in a small Milan company that she owns with two friends. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyA practitioner's checklist for relocation
The first question is whether the client wants to move his life or only his tax position. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Double Taxation Convention, Its Protocol and Everyday Tax Practice — overview and summary
The tax relationship between Switzerland and Italy rests on a treaty that is older than most of the people who apply it. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyA convention of 1976 in the world of 2026
The convention of 1976 was negotiated at a time when the two states had very different ideas of what a tax treaty should achieve. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyStructure and covered taxes
The convention follows the structure of the OECD Model Tax Convention of 1963, with some features that are characteristic of Swiss treaty practice of the 1970s. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe convention in the two legal orders
In Switzerland a ratified treaty binds the Federal Supreme Court and the other authorities applying the law from its entry into force without any act of transformation, so that the courts apply… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyResidence, the tie-breaker and the persons excluded
The convention protects only residents of the two states, and its first question is therefore always whether a person is resident in Switzerland or in Italy within the meaning of Article 4. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe year of the move
Article 4 paragraph 4 contains a rule that is absent from the OECD Model and of considerable practical value. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCertificates of residence and the burden of proof
A taxpayer who claims a treaty benefit must prove his residence. Both administrations rely on certificates issued by the other state's tax authority. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyPermanent establishment, business profits and associated enterprises
Article 5 of the convention defines the permanent establishment as "a fixed place of business in which the enterprise carries on its business wholly or partly". Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyHome office, telework and the OECD update of 2025
Telework has created a further category of risk. An employee of a Swiss company who works from his home in Italy for part of the week may create a fixed place of business of his employer in Italy if… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyBusiness profits and the attribution of profits
Article 7 allocates business profits to the state of residence of the enterprise unless it carries on business in the other state through a permanent establishment situated there. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyDividends, interest and royalties under the convention
Articles 10, 11 and 12 follow the same pattern. The state of residence of the recipient may tax the income without limit. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyDefinitions and the beneficial owner
Article 10 paragraph 3 defines dividends as income from shares, jouissance shares, mining shares, founders' shares or other rights participating in profits, as well as income from other corporate… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe relief clause of Article 23
Article 23 is the most unusual provision of the convention and one of the least known. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyIntra-group payments under the agreement with the European Union
The most important relief for groups with companies in Lugano and in Italy does not derive from the bilateral convention. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyAnti-abuse conditions and beneficial ownership
Article 9 applies "without prejudice to the application of domestic or agreement-based provisions for the prevention of fraud or abuse". Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyRefund procedures in both directions
A treaty rate is worth only what the procedure delivers. The convention leaves the procedure for granting the reduced rates to the domestic law of each state and to arrangements between the competent… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Italian refund for Swiss residents
A Swiss resident who receives Italian dividends, interest or royalties may claim relief at source by delivering to the Italian withholding agent, before the payment, a declaration and a certificate… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe 11/26 refund and the 1.2 per cent rate
Two features of Italian domestic law complicate the picture. First, a non-resident recipient of Italian dividends may claim a refund of up to eleven twenty-sixths of the Italian withholding tax if he… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Italian investor with a Swiss account
The typical client of a Lugano private bank is an Italian resident individual whose portfolio of shares, bonds and funds is booked in Switzerland. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyInterest, funds and the role of the Swiss bank
Interest on Swiss franc bonds and on deposits with Swiss banks is subject to Swiss withholding tax of 35 per cent, of which an Italian resident can recover 22.5 percentage points, leaving the treaty… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyEmployment income, directors' fees and pensions
Article 15 paragraph 1 allocates salaries, wages and similar remuneration to the state of residence of the employee unless the employment is exercised in the other state. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyDirectors' fees
Article 16 allocates directors' fees and similar payments received by a resident of one state in his capacity as a member of the board of directors or of a similar organ of a company resident in the… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Italian 5 per cent tax on Swiss pensions and capital benefits
Italian domestic law grants Swiss pension benefits a preferential treatment that makes Article 18 particularly favourable for Italian residents. Article 76 paragraph 1 of Law No. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyPillar 3a, vested benefits and early withdrawals
The Italian 5 per cent rule covers AVS and LPP benefits. Benefits from the tied private pension provision of the third pillar (pillar 3a) and from vested benefits accounts ( conti di libero passaggio… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyReal estate, wealth and inheritance
Many Italian families own holiday homes on the lakes of Lugano and Maggiore, and some own rental property in Ticino as an investment. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWealth and the absence of a wealth tax in Italy
Article 22 of the convention covers taxes on capital. Paragraph 1 allocates capital represented by immovable property to the state in which it is situated, paragraph 2 movable property of a permanent… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyRelief, disputes and the newer international layers
Article 24 combines two methods. Italy applies the credit method. When a resident of Italy has income that may be taxed in Switzerland, Italy may include it in its tax base. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyExchange of information
Article 27, as amended by the Protocol of 2015, allows the exchange of information that is foreseeably relevant for the application of the convention or of the domestic tax law of either state,… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyWorked examples and a practitioner's checklist
Signora A lives in Milan and holds a portfolio of Swiss blue-chip shares with a Lugano bank in her own name. In 2026 she receives gross dividends of CHF 40,000. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCase 3: royalties to a Lugano brand company
Gamma SA in Lugano owns the trademarks of a fashion group and licenses them to Gamma S.p.A. in Como, which pays royalties of EUR 3 million a year. Gamma SA has held 30 per cent of Gamma S.p.A. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyCase 5: the Italian director of a Lugano company
Signor C lives in Varese and sits on the board of Delta SA in Lugano, for which he receives fees of CHF 60,000. Under Article 16 of the convention, Switzerland may tax the fees. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyLitigation and Enforcement Across the Border: The Lugano Convention and Judicial Assistance — overview and summary
The treaty that governs most civil litigation between Switzerland and the European Union carries the name of the financial centre that this book describes. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyA convention named after a city: from Brussels 1968 to Lugano 2007
The European Economic Community created its system of civil jurisdiction in the Brussels Convention of 27 September 1968. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe revision of 2007
The Brussels Convention was transformed into Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 (Brussels I), which applied from 1 March 2002. The parallel Lugano Convention had to follow. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyJurisdiction under the Convention: domicile, contracts, consumers and the race to court
The Convention applies in civil and commercial matters, whatever the nature of the court or tribunal. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyConsumers and the Lugano bank
The consumer rules of Articles 15 to 17 are the most sensitive part of the Convention for the Lugano private banking market. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyEmployment, choice of court and appearance
The employment rules of Articles 18 to 21 matter for Ticino because of the large number of cross-border commuters from Italy. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyRecognition and enforcement: exequatur, refusal and the Italian payment order
Title III of the Convention separates recognition from enforcement. Under Article 33, a judgment given in a contracting state is recognized in the other contracting states without any special… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe declaration of enforceability
Enforcement requires a separate step. Under Article 38, a judgment that is enforceable in the state of origin is enforced in another contracting state when, on the application of any interested… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Italian decreto ingiuntivo in Switzerland
The Italian payment order procedure under Articles 633 ff. of the Codice di procedura civile allows a creditor with written evidence of a claim to obtain from the court an order to pay without… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyTwo speeds: the Brussels Ia Regulation, Brexit and the outer limits of the Convention
The European Union recast the Brussels I Regulation as Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, known as Brussels Ia, which applies to proceedings instituted on or after 10 January 2015. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe United Kingdom's failed accession
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020 and ceased to be bound by the Brussels instruments and by the Lugano Convention, as a member state, at the end of the transition period… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyLitigating in Ticino and in Lombardy: two codes of civil procedure
Until 2010 every Swiss canton had its own code of civil procedure, and Ticino's code of 1971 was the procedural home of generations of Lugano lawyers. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalySecurity for costs and the Hague Convention of 1954
A claimant who has no domicile or seat in Switzerland must, on request of the defendant, provide security for the defendant's party costs (Article 99(1)(a) CPC). Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Swiss attachment: freezing the Lugano account of an Italian debtor
The attachment ( sequestro, German Arrest) under Articles 271 to 281 DEBA is the oldest and most effective protective measure of Swiss law for money claims. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyConditions and procedure
The creditor must make credible ( rendere verosimile, German glaubhaft machen) the existence of the claim, the ground for attachment and the existence of assets belonging to the debtor (Article… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyOpposition and prosecution
The debtor and any third party whose rights are affected may file an objection to the attachment order with the court within ten days of becoming aware of it (Article 278(1) DEBA). Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyService of documents, taking of evidence and the sovereignty barrier
A judgment is only as good as the service of the document that started the proceedings. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyArticle 271 of the Swiss Criminal Code
The Swiss insistence on official channels has a criminal law basis. Article 271(1) of the Swiss Criminal Code (SCC) punishes any person who, without lawful authority, carries out activities on behalf… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe two exclusions: arbitration and insolvency across the border
Article 1(2)(d) excludes arbitration from the Lugano Convention. The exclusion covers the arbitral proceedings themselves, court proceedings in support of arbitration such as the appointment of… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyInsolvency outside the Convention
Bankruptcy, proceedings relating to the winding-up of insolvent companies, judicial arrangements and analogous proceedings are equally excluded from the Convention (Article 1(2)(b)). Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe Italian liquidazione giudiziale
On the Italian side, the Code of Business Crisis and Insolvency ( Codice della crisi d'impresa e dell'insolvenza, CCII), adopted by Legislative Decree No. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyAsset tracing and recovery: civil and criminal routes
The creditor who wins a judgment against an Italian debtor rarely knows where the debtor's assets are. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyItalian requests for mutual assistance
Most asset recovery between Italy and Switzerland runs through Italian criminal proceedings and requests for mutual assistance. Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyHandover of assets under Article 74a IMAC
Seizure is only the first step. Under Article 74a IMAC, objects or assets seized as a precautionary measure may be handed over to the competent foreign authority on request, at the end of the mutual… Read more Lugano · Lugano and ItalyThe practitioner's toolkit: creditor and defendant on either side of the border
Most cross-border disputes are decided when the contract is drafted. A Lugano bank, asset manager or trading house that deals with Italian counterparties has three options. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoPlan ₿: A City Adopts Bitcoin — overview and summary
On 3 March 2022 the City of Lugano and Tether, the issuer of the most widely used dollar stablecoin, announced a joint programme under the name "Plan ₿ ". Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoBefore Plan ₿: a financial centre in search of a new business
The decade before 2022 was the most difficult in the modern history of Lugano as a financial centre. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe cantonal motion of 2017 and the pilot of 2022
At cantonal level the debate began with a motion of 16 October 2017 by Paolo Pamini, a member of the Grand Council for the Swiss People's Party (UDC) and an economist. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe launch of 3 March 2022 and the memorandum of understanding
The announcement of 3 March 2022 was staged as an international event. Foletti and Ardoino presented a programme whose elements were set out in the first reports: a fund of CHF 100 million to be made… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe mining project and the first controversies
Within three weeks of the launch the programme met its first serious criticism. In March 2022 reports appeared that the city was considering a public bitcoin mining facility with an investment of… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoPaying the city in bitcoin and USDT
In its first phase the payment element of Plan ₿ was limited to certain online transactions with the city. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe legal construction: payment through an agent
In legal terms the taxpayer who pays a municipal invoice in bitcoin does not pay the city in bitcoin. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLVGA, the MyLugano app and the merchant network
The least spectacular element of Plan ₿ is probably the one that reaches the largest number of residents. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe legal characterization of LVGA
LVGA raises questions under financial market law that are treated systematically in Chapter I.II. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoForum, foundation, education and symbols
The most visible product of Plan ₿ is its annual conference. The answer of the Municipio to the council inquiry of 2023 already mentioned a forum in October as one of the main activities agreed with… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoEducation and research
From the beginning, education was presented as a central pillar. The first reports of March 2022 spoke of grants for some 500 students. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoPhase II: the memorandum of 3 March 2026
On 3 March 2026, four years to the day after the launch, Foletti and Ardoino signed a second memorandum in the council chamber of the Palazzo Civico. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLegal questions raised by the five pillars
Each pillar touches an area of law in which the municipality's freedom is limited. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe first legal limit: the Swiss franc as the only legal tender
The most fundamental limit on Plan ₿ lies in the federal constitution. Under Art. 99 para. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoWhat "legal tender" means and what it does not mean
Legal tender has a precise legal function. It is the means by which a debtor can discharge a debt denominated in francs against the will of the creditor, and which the creditor cannot refuse without… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe second legal limit: municipal law, treasury, money laundering and tax
Swiss municipalities enjoy autonomy to the extent that cantonal law grants it, as Art. 50 para. 1 of the Federal Constitution provides. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoAnti-money laundering law
The anti-money laundering dimension was the most serious objection raised in the cantonal parliament in 2021, when the minority report warned that wallets held outside recognized financial… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTax law and the taxpayer's perspective
Three questions of tax law arise from Plan ₿. The first, the payment of taxes, has been answered above: the city accepts payment in bitcoin and USDT for the municipal tax and its other invoices,… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe partner: Tether and the reputational question
Tether was founded in 2014 and issues USDT, the first and by far the most widely used stablecoin, a token that is meant to maintain a value of one United States dollar and that is backed, according… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTether's position after 2022
Since the launch of Plan ₿, the regulatory environment for stablecoins has changed in all major jurisdictions. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoComparisons: Zug, Zermatt, Chiasso and El Salvador
The obvious Swiss comparison is Zug. The City of Zug began accepting bitcoin for municipal fees up to CHF 200 in 2016. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoEl Salvador: the national experiment
The most frequently cited international comparison is El Salvador, which in 2021 became the first State to make bitcoin legal tender. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoWhat Plan ₿ has done for Lugano's financial centre
The clearest effect of Plan ₿ is visibility. Already in March 2023 the Municipio reported that the programme had produced worldwide media coverage and an effect on the city's image that exceeded its… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe link with the established financial centre
The weakest link of Plan ₿ is its connection with the existing financial industry of Lugano. The payment system runs through Bitcoin Suisse, a company based in the canton of Zug. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe Legal Framework for Kryptowerte und Digital Assets in Switzerland — overview and summary
When the City of Lugano announced its Plan ₿ with Tether in March 2022, it could build on a body of Swiss law that already treated Kryptowerte und Digital Assets as a regulated field. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFrom the first token sales to FINMA's taxonomy
Switzerland entered the market for Kryptowerte und Digital Assets through foundations in the Canton of Zug. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoPre-financing, pre-sales and the ruling procedure
The guidelines also addressed two practices of the token market. In a pre-financing, investors paid in advance for tokens that would be created only later, and in a pre-sale they acquired, before the… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe stablecoin supplement of 2019
On 11 September 2019 FINMA published a supplement to its ICO guidelines dealing with stablecoins, tokens whose value is linked to an asset such as a currency, a commodity, real estate or securities. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe DLT Act: architecture and timetable
The legislative response began with a report. On 14 December 2018 the Federal Council adopted a report on the legal framework for distributed ledger technology and blockchain in the financial sector. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe method of technology neutrality
The DLT Act avoided the word "blockchain" and the word "cryptocurrency" in the statutes it amended. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLedger-based securities and DLT trading facilities
The central innovation of the DLT Act is the ledger-based security ( Registerwertrecht, in Italian diritto valore registrato ), regulated in Articles 973d to 973i of the Federal Act of 30 March 1911… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLedger-based securities in the financial system
The DLT Act connected the new category with the existing law on intermediated securities. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe first licence: BX Digital AG
For four years no DLT trading facility was licensed. On 18 March 2025 FINMA granted the first licence to BX Digital AG, a sister company of the BX Swiss exchange in the Boerse Stuttgart Group, to… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoSegregation in bankruptcy and the custody of Kryptowerte und Digital Assets
Before 2021 the position of a client whose bitcoin was held by a bankrupt exchange was uncertain. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoStaking: Guidance 08/2023
The question of permanent availability became acute with staking. In proof-of-stake networks such as Ethereum after its transition in September 2022, holders who lock their tokens as collateral for… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe lessons of 2022
The year 2022 tested these rules. In May 2022 the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD lost its peg and the associated token Luna collapsed, destroying tens of billions of dollars of market value within… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe banking perimeter, the FinTech licence and the banks
The Banking Act reserves to licensed banks the commercial acceptance of deposits from the public. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe FinTech licence
With effect from 1 January 2019 Parliament introduced, in Article 1b BankA, a licence for institutions that accept public deposits up to CHF 100 million on condition that the funds are neither… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoBanks specialized in Kryptowerte und Digital Assets
The first Swiss banks specialized in Kryptowerte und Digital Assets received their licences in August 2019, when FINMA granted banking and securities dealer licences to SEBA Crypto AG in Zug and to… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoStablecoins under current law
Under the law in force in 2026, Switzerland has no special statute for stablecoins. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoAnti-money laundering law and the travel rule
The Anti-Money Laundering Act was the first body of Swiss financial market law to reach the providers of services in Kryptowerte und Digital Assets. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe travel rule without exception
In payment transactions Swiss law has long required that the originator's name, account number and address accompany a wire transfer, so that the receiving institution knows who sent the funds. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe reform of 2025 and 2026: payment instrument institutions and crypto-institutions
On 22 October 2025 the Federal Council opened a consultation on an amendment of the Financial Institutions Act that would introduce two new licence categories. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoCriticism in the consultation
The industry welcomed the direction but asked for changes. In December 2025 the Swiss Blockchain Federation, the Crypto Valley Association, the Swiss Fintech Association and the Capital Markets and… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTaxation of Kryptowerte und Digital Assets in Switzerland and Ticino
Swiss tax law contains no special provisions for Kryptowerte und Digital Assets. The Federal Tax Administration (ESTV, in Italian AFC) has set out its practice in a working paper on the treatment of… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoIssuers, withholding tax, stamp duties and VAT
For the issuer of a token, the working paper distinguishes by category. Proceeds from the issue of utility tokens are taxable income of the issuer and must be recorded as income at the time of issue,… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoSwiss law meets MiCAR: serving Italian clients from Lugano
The European Union regulated Kryptowerte und Digital Assets through Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2023, known as MiCAR. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe Italian implementation
Italy adapted its law to MiCAR by Legislative Decree No. 129 of 5 September 2024. The decree designates CONSOB and the Banca d'Italia as competent authorities and divides their tasks by function. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLugano's market and a practitioner's checklist
Lugano's market for Kryptowerte und Digital Assets consists of three groups. The first comprises the specialized banks and brokers from other parts of Switzerland that have opened offices in the city… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLaunching a service from Lugano
For a provider of exchange, brokerage or custody services the steps differ. The provider must first decide whether it will hold client assets and in which form. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFintech, Research and Artificial Intelligence in Ticino — overview and summary
For most of its history the financial centre of Lugano lived from proximity, language and discretion. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoA university for the third financial centre
Ticino was the last region of Switzerland with a national language of its own to obtain a university. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoGrowth and the faculty of informatics
The university expanded in two directions after 2000. In 2004 it created the Faculty of Informatics, the first faculty of computer science in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and in 2008 an… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFinance research and professional training
Research in finance at USI is concentrated in the Institute of Finance ( Istituto di finanza, IFin) of the Faculty of Economics, which is affiliated with the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI). Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoContinuing education with the banking sector
The link between university research and banking practice runs through continuing education. In December 2019 USI announced a lifelong learning initiative of the Swiss Finance Institute in Lugano. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoIDSIA: artificial intelligence in Lugano since 1988
The oldest of the research institutions described in this chapter was founded by a private benefactor eight years before the canton had a university. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoOther lines of research: ant colonies, robots and reasoning under uncertainty
IDSIA's work is broader than neural networks. In the 1990s Luca Maria Gambardella, who later directed the institute for many years, and Marco Dorigo developed the "ant colony system", a method of… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoCSCS: national supercomputing on Lake Lugano
The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre ( Centro Svizzero di Calcolo Scientifico, CSCS) was founded in 1991 as a unit of ETH Zurich, which still operates it. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoPiz Daint, Alps and MeteoSwiss
For a decade the flagship of the centre was Piz Daint, a Cray system installed in the new building in December 2012 and progressively upgraded with graphics processors. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoInnovation policy, start-ups and fintech in Ticino
The canton organizes its support for start-ups and innovative small and medium enterprises through the foundation AGIRE ( Fondazione AGIRE ), established in 2011 by the canton's Department of Finance… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFintech companies: a small sector
Measured by the narrow definition of the Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ) of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, which counts companies whose core business is the provision… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTechnology in the established financial industry
The most important users of financial technology in Ticino are the established institutions. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoArtificial intelligence in banking and compliance
The first large-scale use of machine learning in Swiss banks was in compliance. The Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance of FINMA requires banks and securities firms to monitor their business… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFINMA Guidance 08/2024
On 18 December 2024 FINMA published Guidance 08/2024 on governance and risk management when using artificial intelligence. The guidance does not create new rules. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoResponsibility remains with the institution
The use of artificial intelligence does not shift legal responsibility. Under the Anti- Money Laundering Act the financial intermediary must clarify the economic background and purpose of unusual… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoData protection and banking secrecy in the age of artificial intelligence
The Federal Act on Data Protection of 25 September 2020 (FADP) entered into force on 1 September 2023 and replaced the act of 1992. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoBanking secrecy and professional secrecy
For banks, the FADP is overlaid by banking secrecy. Art. 47 of the Banking Act makes it a criminal offence for bank organs, employees, agents and auditors to disclose secrets entrusted to them in… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoOutsourcing, operational resilience and cybersecurity
Most artificial intelligence used by Lugano financial institutions is supplied by third parties, and much of it runs in the cloud. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoCircular 2023/1: operational risks and resilience
FINMA Circular 2023/1 "Operational risks and resilience – banks" of 7 December 2022 entered into force on 1 January 2024 and replaced Circular 2008/21 on operational risks of banks. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoLugano providers and Italian banks: the reach of DORA
The rules on operational resilience have a cross-border dimension for Lugano. Some Ticino companies provide IT services, software or data processing to banks and financial institutions in Italy. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTwo models of regulating artificial intelligence: Bern and Brussels
Switzerland has no general law on artificial intelligence. On 12 February 2025 the Federal Council decided on its approach after reviewing an overview of possible regulatory models that the Federal… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoThe European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act
The European Union chose the opposite model. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of 13 June 2024 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (the AI Act) was published in the Official Journal on 12… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoFinancial services under the AI Act
Two categories in Annex III concern the financial sector directly. Artificial intelligence systems intended to be used to evaluate the creditworthiness of natural persons or establish their credit… Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoTalent, the cross-border workforce and the outlook
The knowledge infrastructure described in this chapter employs several hundred researchers and staff. Read more Lugano · Digital LuganoScenarios for research, technology and the financial centre
Three developments will shape the role of research and technology in Lugano's financial centre over the coming decade. The first is the institutional consolidation of training and research. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian as a National and Official Language of the Confederation — overview and summary
Every federal statute that governs a bank in Lugano exists in three versions of equal authority. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFrom subject lands to national language, 1798–1999
The legal status of Italian in Switzerland is younger than the Italian-speaking presence in the Confederation. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Federal Constitution of 1848: three national languages
The Federal Constitution of 12 September 1848 settled the question for the new federal state. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial Infrastructure1996 and 1999: the modern language article
The language article was revised again on 10 March 1996, when 76.2 per cent of the voters and all cantons approved the new text. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe constitutional framework: Articles 4, 8, 18, 70 and 175
The Federal Constitution of 1999 treats language in five provisions that belong together. Article 4 names the national languages. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFreedom of language and the prohibition of discrimination
Article 18 guarantees that "the freedom to use any language is guaranteed", in Italian "La libertà di lingua è garantita". Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Languages Act of 2007 and the Languages Ordinance
For almost a decade after 1999 the language article of the constitution lacked an implementing statute. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureParliament, government and publications
Article 7 requires the federal authorities to use appropriate, clear and comprehensible language and to ensure gender-appropriate wording. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Languages Ordinance and its revisions
The ordinance of 2010, as revised with effect from 1 October 2014, specifies the duties of the federal administration. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureWho speaks Italian in Switzerland
The legal equality of Italian rests on a demographic minority. The Federal Statistical Office measures language through the structural survey, in which respondents may indicate more than one main… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Italian-speaking Grisons
The Italian-speaking part of the Grisons, the Grigioni italiano, comprises four valleys separated from each other by mountain ranges: Mesolcina and Calanca, which form the Moesa region and open… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian in the federal administration: target values and reality
The representation of Italian speakers in the federal administration is the most measurable test of the equality of Italian. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian speakers in management
The gap is widest in the senior ranks. In 2014 Italian speakers held 4.8 per cent of positions in salary classes 34 to 38, the senior management of the administration, against a minimum target of 6.5… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe revision of 2026
The amendment of the Languages Ordinance adopted in October 2025 raised the target range for Italian speakers from 6.5–8.5 per cent to 7.5–8.5 per cent from 1 January 2026. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThree authentic texts: equal authority and its consequences
The rule that the three language versions of federal enactments are equally binding is the legal core of the equality of Italian. It means that Swiss federal law has no original text. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureHow the Federal Supreme Court resolves discrepancies
Divergences between the three versions are inevitable. They arise from translation errors, from different legal traditions behind the terms of each language, from late amendments in parliamentary… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureMaking federal law in Italian
The equality of the three versions would be an empty promise without an apparatus that produces the Italian text. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian in Parliament and in the federal courts
The Federal Assembly and the federal courts are the institutions in which the equality of the official languages is tested in public. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Federal Supreme Court
The Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne, with a seat for its social law divisions in Lucerne, decides in all official languages. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe other federal courts
The Federal Administrative Court in St. Gallen, the court of first instance for appeals against decisions of federal authorities, including FINMA, also decides in all official languages. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureMedia, universities and the debate about italianità
The legal status of a language depends on institutions that use it every day: broadcasters and newspapers that report in it, universities that teach and research in it, and schools that transmit it… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureUniversities and research
For most of the federal state's history, Ticino had no university. Young Ticinese who wanted an academic education had to study in the universities north of the Alps or in Italy. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Forum per l'italiano in Svizzera
The Forum per l'italiano in Svizzera was constituted on 30 November 2012 in Zurich on the initiative of the cantons of Ticino and the Grisons. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian as a working language of the financial centre
For the financial centre of Lugano, the official status of Italian has a concrete commercial meaning. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe institutions of the Ticino financial centre
The institutions of the Ticino financial centre work in Italian. The Associazione Bancaria Ticinese (ABT), founded in 1920, represents the banks of the canton at cantonal level and defends the image… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Swiss variety of Italian
The Italian used in Swiss institutions is standard Italian, as Article 5 paragraph 2 of the Languages Act requires. It is nevertheless a recognizable variety. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureWhy language equality matters: legal certainty and access to justice
The equality of the official languages is sometimes discussed as a question of identity and national cohesion. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureEquality in practice: three tests
The equality of Italian can be measured by three tests that the practitioner can apply. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureBellinzona and Federal Justice in Italian — overview and summary
On 31 January 2025 the Criminal Chamber of the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona convicted the Dutch parent company of the Trafigura commodity group, a former senior manager of the group, an… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFrom the federal assizes to a court in Bellinzona
For most of its history the Swiss federal State left criminal justice to the cantons. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe efficiency bill and the reform of the judiciary
Two reforms around the turn of the century changed this structure. The first was the so-called efficiency bill ( Effizienzvorlage ), an amendment to the Swiss Criminal Code that entered into force on… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFrom provisional premises to Viale Stefano Franscini 7
On 23 June 2003 the general project direction for the new federal courts, chaired by Heinrich Koller, Director of the Federal Office of Justice, approved Viale Franscini in Bellinzona as the location… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureOrganization, judges and caseload
The Federal Criminal Court is organized in three chambers under Articles 32 ff. StBOG. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureCaseload
The court's caseload is dominated numerically by the Board of Appeal. The Criminal Chamber receives a few dozen indictments and other cases a year, but these include the longest and most complex… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe language of federal criminal proceedings
A court that sits in Bellinzona and tries cases from all parts of Switzerland needs a rule on the language in which each case is conducted. Article 3 StBOG provides it. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe share of Italian
The court publishes the distribution of its cases by language. In 2025, 380 of the 686 cases received (55.4 per cent) were in German, 236 (34.4 per cent) in French and 70 (10.2 per cent) in Italian. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureLanguage beyond the trial
Language questions continue after the trial. A party appealing to the Federal Supreme Court must write in an official language. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFederal jurisdiction and the Office of the Attorney General
The Federal Criminal Court can only try what the OAG may prosecute, which in turn depends on what the law assigns to federal jurisdiction. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFederal administrative criminal law
A third group of cases reaches Bellinzona through administrative criminal law. Breaches of the financial market acts and of the reporting duties under the Anti-Money Laundering Act are prosecuted by… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureBanks in the dock: corporate liability before the Federal Criminal Court
Article 102 SCC makes an undertaking criminally liable for certain offences committed within it, including money laundering and bribery, if it failed to take all reasonable organizational measures… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureMergers and successor liability
A second question arose from the disappearance of Credit Suisse itself. In a separate case concerning loans arranged in 2013 and 2014 by London subsidiaries of Credit Suisse for Mozambican state… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureLombard Odier and the Karimova assets
The most recent major bank case was decided on 27 July 2026. The OAG had charged Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the late president of Uzbekistan, with participation in a criminal organization,… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureCommodities, sovereign funds and football: the international cases
The Trafigura judgment of 31 January 2025 described at the beginning of this chapter was the culmination of a series of foreign bribery cases involving commodity traders. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial Infrastructure1MDB, PetroSaudi and the Swiss banks
The largest financial fraud tried in Bellinzona concerned the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureFIFA: two trials and their endings
The cases arising from the football federations show the limits of criminal justice in complex international matters. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Board of Appeal and international mutual assistance
Since 2007 the Federal Criminal Court has been the principal court for international mutual assistance in criminal matters. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe political and the legal limits: the Russian requests
The limits of judicial review in mutual assistance became visible in the requests from Russia. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureSupervision, criticism and the crisis of 2020
The Federal Criminal Court is independent in its judicial activity and subject to two forms of supervision over its administration. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureParty politics and judicial independence
A further line of criticism concerns the election of federal judges. Candidates for the federal courts are in practice proposed by the political parties according to their strength in the Federal… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe other federal courts and the courts of Ticino
The Federal Criminal Court is one of four federal courts. The Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne, with its social law divisions in Lucerne, is the highest court of the country. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe Ticino judiciary: organization
The cantonal judiciary of Ticino is organized under the Law on Judicial Organization ( Legge sull'organizzazione giudiziaria, LOG). Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian in arbitration
Much of the commercial litigation of a financial and trading centre never reaches the state courts. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructurePractice: when Italian makes sense
Italian is the natural language of an arbitration when the contract was drafted in Italian, when the parties and their witnesses are Italian or Ticinese and when the documentary evidence is mainly… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureWhat a federal court in Ticino means for the financial centre
The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes post-war Bellinzona as a city of cantonal officials and employees. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureThe defence perspective
For defence counsel the location and the language rules of the court shape strategy from the first day of an investigation. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureLanguage, Terminology and Trust: Swiss Italian and Italian Legal Language — overview and summary
A Milanese lawyer who reads a Swiss contract written in Italian recognizes every word and still misreads a good part of it. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureTwo Italian legal languages: origins and status
Legal language is the language of a legal order before it is the language of a people. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureTicino's own legal vocabulary
Federal law is only one layer. The Canton of Ticino legislates in Italian on its own organization, its courts, its taxes, its municipalities and the professions it regulates. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureA comparative table of false friends
Comparative lawyers distinguish three relationships between terms of two legal languages. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureHow to use the table
The table invites two errors. The first is to assume that the right-hand column offers a translation of the left-hand column. In most rows it offers only the nearest concept of the other legal order. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureCompany and commercial law: SA, Sagl, gerenti and procuratori
The Swiss company limited by shares is called Aktiengesellschaft in German, société anonyme in French and società anonima in Italian. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureProcura and procuratore: a classic false friend
Commercial representation produces the most dangerous false friend of company law. Swiss law distinguishes between agency in general ( rappresentanza, Art. 32 ff. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureDebt enforcement, insolvency, courts and prosecutors
Switzerland collects money debts through a federal statute that has no Italian equivalent: the Federal Act on Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy of 11 April 1889, called in Italian Legge federale sulla… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureSequestro, pignoramento and the vocabulary of seizure
Seizure has its own false friends. The Swiss sequestro (German Arrest) under Art. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureMinistero pubblico and pubblico ministero
The criminal prosecution authority of Ticino is the Ministero pubblico. It consists of a procuratore generale and twenty-two procuratori pubblici, elected by the Gran Consiglio for terms of ten… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureSecurity, property, succession and public law
Suretyship is the field in which a translation from Italian into Swiss Italian can destroy a security. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureDiritto di compera, prelazione and ricupera
Swiss property law knows three rights that can be agreed in a contract and annotated in the land register: the right of pre-emption ( diritto di prelazione ), the right to purchase ( diritto di… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureDomicilio, residenza and the vocabulary of personal status
Swiss and Italian law also define the place where a person lives in different ways. Under Art. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureTranslation risk in contracts, wills, powers of attorney and corporate documents
Translation errors in cross-border legal documents rarely result from ignorance of the language. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureWills and succession documents
Wills are especially exposed, because they are often drafted by the testator himself and interpreted after his death, when he can no longer explain them. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureCorporate documents
Corporate documents for groups with Swiss and Italian entities pose the problem of parallel terminologies within one group. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureBilingual and trilingual drafting
Multilingual documents follow one of three models. In the first, the contract is drafted in one language, which alone is binding, and translations are provided for information only. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureArticle 18 CO and the interpretation of multilingual contracts
The interpretation of contracts under Swiss law begins with Art. 18(1) CO. Its Italian text reads: "Per giudicare di un contratto, sia per la forma che per il contenuto, si deve indagare quale sia… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureUnfair terms, double signatures and the Italian reader
A Swiss contract with an Italian party may also have to satisfy Italian formal requirements if it is invoked before an Italian court. Article 1341(2) c.c. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureNotarial instruments, apostilles and translations for courts
Ticino belongs to the Latin notarial tradition, which it shares with Italy and with the French-speaking cantons. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureSwiss acts in Italy and the apostille
The Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents replaces the chain of legalizations by a single certificate, the apostille, issued by… Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureLanguage before Swiss courts
Swiss civil procedure is organized by canton. Article 129(1) of the Civil Procedure Code provides that proceedings are conducted in the official language of the canton, which in Ticino is Italian. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureLanguage in banking documentation and information duties
A private bank in Lugano opens an account with a set of documents that varies little from bank to bank. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian rules for Italian clients
When a Swiss bank provides services to clients resident in Italy, Italian law may impose additional language requirements. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureItalian, English and German in Lugano's banks and law firms
The daily work of Lugano's financial centre takes place in three languages, each with its own function. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureEnglish as the language of documentation
English has become the dominant language of financial documentation in Lugano, as in all international financial centres. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureTerminology resources and a drafting checklist
The most authoritative source of Swiss Italian legal terminology is the Italian version of federal law itself, published in the Systematic Compilation ( Raccolta sistematica) on the Fedlex platform. Read more Lugano · The Italian Language as Financial InfrastructureA short glossary for cross-border documents
The following list supplements the table at the beginning of the chapter with terms that appear in banking and corporate documents. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Competitors and Partners: Milan, Monaco, Zurich, Geneva, Dubai and Singapore — overview and summary
The previous Parts of this book have described Lugano from the inside: its banks and asset managers, its trading houses, its compliance architecture, its Italian hinterland and its language. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Measuring competition between financial centres
A financial centre competes in at least three markets at once. The first is the market for residence, in which states and cities offer wealthy individuals a tax regime, a legal order, security and a… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Cross-border wealth and the booking centres
A second instrument is the annual Global Wealth Report of the Boston Consulting Group, which estimates the financial wealth booked outside the owner's country of residence. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Milan: the neighbour as competitor
For most of the post-war period Milan was the place from which Lugano's clients came. Lugano, in turn, received a large part of the savings that left Milan. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Private banking and family offices in Milan
The second element of Milan's attraction is the depth of its domestic private banking market. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Monaco: the residence market of the Riviera
The Principality of Monaco is the oldest competitor of Lugano for the residence of wealthy Italians. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The grey list and the European high-risk list
In June 2024 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Monaco under increased monitoring, the so-called grey list, after its mutual evaluation by the Council of Europe's committee MONEYVAL,… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Zurich and Geneva: competition inside Switzerland
Within Switzerland, Lugano competes with two centres of a different order of size. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Decisions, talent and connectivity
The most important form of intra-Swiss competition concerns the location of decisions. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Residence: the cantons as competitors
On the residence market Ticino competes with other cantons, and here the federal structure of Swiss tax law creates a market of its own. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Dubai and Abu Dhabi: the new centre of gravity
No financial centre has gained more ground in the last decade than Dubai. In the GFCI of March 2026 it ranked seventh, four places higher than six months earlier and ahead of every European centre… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Italian and Russian wealth
The flow of Italian wealth to Dubai consists mainly of entrepreneurs, professionals, athletes and younger heirs who move their residence and often their trading or holding companies. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Singapore and Hong Kong: the Asian benchmark
Singapore is the centre that Swiss bankers have studied most closely since the early 2000s, because it combined a stable legal order, a strong currency, low taxes and a policy of attracting private… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The money laundering case of 2023
On 15 August 2023 the Singapore police arrested ten foreign nationals, all of them originally from the Minnan region of south-eastern China and holding passports of several other states, and seized… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035London, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein
London remains the second centre in the GFCI and the largest European market for international finance, law and wealth advice. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Liechtenstein: the Swiss franc within the European Economic Area
Liechtenstein, ranked ninetieth in the GFCI, is the closest analogue to Lugano among the centres considered here. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The Switzerland–EU package and its limits
The relationship between Switzerland and the European Union rests on sectoral agreements, the Bilateral Agreements I of 1999 and the Bilateral Agreements II of 2004. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The parliamentary and referendum timetable
The Federal Council proposed to submit the package to an optional referendum, which requires only a majority of the people. Parliamentary committees took a different view. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035What the canton can do
The Canton of Ticino has no power to negotiate with the European Union or with Italy. Foreign policy and the law of financial markets are federal matters. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The Berne agreement and the Italian question
The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union created a partner for Switzerland that faced the same problem from the other side: a large financial centre outside the single market that… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Why the agreement was possible
Several conditions made the agreement possible that do not exist in the relationship with the European Union. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Market access as the decisive variable
Seen from Lugano, market access to Italy is the variable that determines how much of the centre's potential business it can actually serve. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035A comparative balance sheet and the case for partnerships
The preceding sections can be summarized in a comparative balance sheet. It must be read with the caveat that each centre offers several regimes and that the right choice for a family depends on its… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Milan and Lugano
A partnership between Milan and Lugano already exists in several forms, although it has not been described as such. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Scenarios for Ticino's Financial Centre — overview and summary
The preceding parts of this book have described how Lugano became Switzerland's third financial centre and how it lost a large part of its original business model after 2009. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Method and baseline
A forecast states what will happen. A scenario describes a coherent path that could happen if certain assumptions hold. It is useful precisely because it makes those assumptions visible. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The starting point in figures
In 2024 USTAT counted 39 banks with offices in Ticino, compared with 45 in 2016. Twelve of them had their head office in the canton. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Demography, talent and the cross-border workforce
Ticino is one of the oldest cantons of Switzerland, whose age structure will change more quickly than the national one over the next quarter of a century. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Training the next generation
The canton has institutions that can respond to the need for new staff. The Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), founded in 1996, offers a Master in Finance taught entirely in English with… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Clients: the next Italian generation and the transfer of wealth
The private banking business of Lugano was built on a clientele of Italian families, and despite all the changes since 2009 Italy remains its most important foreign market. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035What the next generation wants
The expectations of the heirs differ from those of their parents in four respects. The first is transparency. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Industry structure: asset managers, banks and the end of Credit Suisse
Independent asset managers form the densest and most characteristic part of Lugano's financial centre. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The consolidation of the banks
The banking sector has consolidated for three decades, a trend that will continue. The number of banks in Ticino fell from 45 in 2016 to 39 in 2024. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Money, interest rates and real estate
The Swiss franc has been one of the strongest currencies in the world for half a century. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Real estate and mortgages
Real estate is the largest asset class of Ticino households and the main collateral of the cantonal banks. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Sustainable finance and the regulation of nature- related risk
Sustainable finance has moved within a decade from a niche of specialized investors to a field of regulation that affects every bank and asset manager. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The European dimension
For a financial centre whose clients are mainly in the European Union, European law on sustainable finance matters as much as Swiss law. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Technology: Kryptowerte und Digital Assets, tokenisation and artificial intelligence
Part I of this book has described how the City of Lugano made Kryptowerte und Digital Assets a central element of its economic strategy. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Tokenisation and the infrastructure of the financial market
Tokenisation, meaning the representation of securities and other assets on a distributed ledger, may change the infrastructure of the financial market more than retail payments in Kryptowerte und… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Infrastructure and the policy framework
The new railway line through the Alps ( Neue Eisenbahn-Alpentransversale, NEAT, known in Ticino as AlpTransit) has changed the geography of the financial centre more than any other infrastructure… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The city's finances
The ability of the city to continue such investments is limited by its finances. The budget for 2026 presented in October 2025 foresaw a deficit of CHF 4.2 million after CHF 24 million in 2025. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Economic promotion and the institutions of the financial centre
Ticino's economic promotion operates under the cantonal law on economic innovation ( Legge per l'innovazione economica, LInn) and through the Office for Economic Development ( Ufficio per lo… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Three scenarios to 2035
All three scenarios share a set of assumptions that follow from the analysis above. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Scenario B: Gradual erosion
In the second scenario the slow trends dominate and no strong response emerges. The generational change in the Italian clientele leads to steady net outflows, because many heirs move their assets to… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035How the figures were derived
The ranges in Table 2 rest on simple and transparent calculations. For bank employment the starting point is the 5,584 persons employed in 2023, of whom about 43 per cent are over fifty. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Recommendations
The canton holds the most important levers for the slow trends. Its first task is to secure the supply of qualified staff. Read more