Lugano 2035 — a part of the book Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos.
Part K closes the book with an assessment of Lugano's competitive position and the scenarios for the coming decade.
This part belongs to Lugano as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.
Competitors 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 Lugano · Lugano 2035For the industry
The banks, asset managers and fiduciaries have the greatest responsibility for the succession of their own businesses and client relationships. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Conclusion: The Third Financial Centre and the Italian Gateway — overview and summary
This book began with a borderland and ends with a financial centre that still lives from a border. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035From borderland to canton: Parts A to C
Part A showed that the territory of today's Ticino lived for most of its history as the northern edge of a Lombard world. Its dioceses were Como and Milan. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Confession, exile and the economy of credit
Part B was the counterpart to the Geneva volume's part on Calvin. Ticino did not become Protestant. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Flight capital, scandal and the end of secrecy: Parts D and E
Part D explained the rise that gives this book its subject. Chapter D.I showed that the decades from 1914 to 1945 assembled the elements of the later boom while the volumes remained small. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Scandal as the origin of rules
Chapter D.III treated the scandal that turned this growth into a regulatory problem. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Fiduciaries, market access and the Italian family
Chapter E.III turned to the parabanking industry that characterizes Lugano more than its banks do. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Niches, compliance and the hinterland: Parts F to H
Part F described a second pillar that the public image of Lugano as a banking town tends to hide. In 2024 Swiss commodity trading produced a gross value added of CHF 19.2 billion. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035The compliance architecture
Part G treated the rules that surround these businesses. Chapter G.I showed that Lugano's traders depend on transactional trade finance provided mainly by UBS, cantonal banks and Geneva-based lenders… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Lombardy as hinterland
Part H was the counterpart to the Geneva volume's part on Africa. Its subject was a hinterland of a very different kind. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Technology, language and the decade ahead: Parts I to K
Part I examined Lugano's attempt to define a role that does not depend on the Italian border. On 3 March 2022 the City of Lugano and Tether announced Plan ₿. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Competitors and scenarios
Part K began by looking at Lugano from outside. In the Global Financial Centres Index of March 2026 Lugano ranked twenty-fifth with 724 points, ahead of Milan in forty-fifth place, Monaco in… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Lugano and Geneva: a systematic comparison
This book was written as a companion to the Geneva volume, and its Parts were designed to answer that volume's Parts one by one: Part B to the Reformation, Part F to commodity trading, Part H to… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Private banks and Italian-client banking
The difference shows most clearly in the structure of the banks. Geneva is the centre of the Swiss private banking partnerships and of a large community of foreign banks, with a clientele that the… Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Africa and Lombardy as hinterlands
The Geneva volume gave a Part to Africa, a continent whose commodity producers, sovereign clients and elites form one of the hinterlands of Geneva's trading houses and banks. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035What the comparison teaches
Three lessons follow from the comparison. The first is that confession shaped above all the early capital of both cities. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Five recurring themes
Every Part of this book returned to trust, although the word meant different things in different centuries. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Dependence on Italy
Lugano's dependence on Italy is the most constant fact of its history, and Part D showed that its rise was driven by Italian conditions. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035From discretion to transparency
The fifth theme summarizes the transformation of the last quarter century. A generation ago the Lugano adviser offered discretion in the face of a foreign tax authority that could see little. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Fourteen theses for practitioners, clients and policymakers
The following theses condense the argument of the book into propositions that can be tested against practice. They are addressed to three groups whose interests overlap without coinciding. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035What practitioners should take away
For the Italian family the decisive change of the last decade is that the value of a Swiss relationship now lies in planning. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Advising asset managers and fiduciaries
For the independent asset manager the regulatory transition of 2020 to 2022 is complete, but its consequences are still unfolding. Read more Lugano · Lugano 2035Epilogue: the Italian-speaking south as Switzerland's bridge to Europe's south
Writers on Ticino have long been tempted to call it a gateway or a bridge. Such words are useful only as far as the facts support them. Read more