The complete text of Dr Alexander Ressos’s study of Zurich as an international financial centre, from the guild city and the Reformation to the big banks, insurance, capital markets, crypto-assets and the outlook to 2035, published here chapter by chapter.
The complete text of Dr Alexander Ressos’s study of Zurich as an international financial centre, from the guild city and the Reformation to the big banks, insurance, capital markets, crypto-assets 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.
Turicum: from Roman customs post to medieval market town — overview and summary
Every financial centre rests on a place, and every place carries a history that shapes what can be built on it. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Roman statio Turicensis and the Quadragesima Galliarum
The Roman customs post did not arise in empty country. The shores of Lake Zurich had been settled since the Neolithic. Read more Zurich · OriginsLate antiquity and the Alamannic period
The third century brought the northern provinces of the Empire into a prolonged crisis. Read more Zurich · OriginsCarolingian foundations: the royal fisc, the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster
The Frankish kings incorporated the region of the Alamanni into their kingdom during the sixth century, but it was under the Carolingians that Zurich regained a significance comparable to that of the… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Pfalz on the Lindenhof and royal presence
Kings in the early and high Middle Ages governed by travelling. Having no fixed capital, they moved with their court from one place to another, lodging in episcopal cities, royal abbeys and palaces. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe abbess’s regalia: coinage, market and toll
Around 1045, in the reign of Henry III, the Fraumünster received the rights of coinage, toll and market. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Zähringer, imperial freedom and the rise of the council
Ecclesiastical lordships required lay protectors. The advocates (Vögte) of the Zurich churches exercised on their behalf the high jurisdiction, which clerics could not wield, and represented them in… Read more Zurich · OriginsZurich enters the Confederation (1351) and builds a territory
The guild constitution of 1336 left Zurich internally divided. Members of the old council who had been expelled by Rudolf Brun found support among the nobility of the region, above all Count Johann… Read more Zurich · OriginsWhat the long history left to the financial centre
The first legacy of the period from Turicum to the late medieval city is location in the fullest sense. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Brun constitution of 1336 and the political economy of the guilds — overview and summary
On 16 July 1336 the citizens of Zurich gathered in the Franciscan friary and swore an oath to a document that would govern their city, with successive amendments, for more than four and a half… Read more Zurich · OriginsZurich before 1336: a council of knights and merchants
By the early fourteenth century Zurich was a self-governing imperial town. The imperial advocacy that the Zähringer dukes had held since 1098 was not granted again as a hereditary fief after their… Read more Zurich · OriginsRudolf Brun and the revolution of 1336
Rudolf Brun is first mentioned in the Zurich sources in 1324. The son of Jakob Brun, himself a councillor, and of Mechthild, he was a knight and married Margaretha Fütschi, the daughter of a… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Constaffel and the thirteen guilds
The word Constaffel, or Konstaffel, derives from legal terminology in which it designated the inhabitants of a castle, a town or a quarter of a town. Read more Zurich · OriginsRevising the compact: the Geschworene Briefe of 1373, 1393, 1489 and 1498
A distinctive feature of Zurich’s constitutional history is that the city never adopted a constitution once and for all. Read more Zurich · OriginsHow the guilds governed the market
The political guilds of Zurich were also economic authorities. They wrote and enforced the rules of the crafts, supervised quality, fixed or influenced prices and wages, controlled admission to… Read more Zurich · OriginsMerchants and the state: the Constaffel, the Saffran and the Meisen
The revolution of 1336 was directed against a merchant oligarchy, yet merchants kept their access to power through new channels. Read more Zurich · OriginsHans Waldmann and the limits of power
No figure illustrates the possibilities and the limits of the guild order better than Hans Waldmann. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe long survival of the guild order and its legacy
The guild constitution created by Brun and revised in 1373, 1393, 1489 and 1498 survived the Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War and the Enlightenment. It adapted through successive amendments. Read more Zurich · OriginsLake, Limmat and Alpine passes: trade routes before the Reformation — overview and summary
Anyone who walks today from the Paradeplatz down to the Limmat, past the Fraumünster and along the Schipfe, crosses in a few hundred metres the whole geography that this chapter describes. Read more Zurich · OriginsA city at the junction of waters
Zurich stands at the point where the Limmat leaves the northern end of Lake Zurich. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Alpine passes and the shape of the transit business
Long before Zurich existed as a town the Alps were crossed, the passes of Graubünden being among the oldest routes. Read more Zurich · OriginsBoatmen, warehouses and tolls in the city
The men who worked Zurich’s waterways were among the first groups to be organised in the new constitutional order of 1336. Read more Zurich · OriginsSilk, linen and wool: Zurich’s first export trades
Transit was one foundation of a merchant city, and production for export was another. Read more Zurich · OriginsMarkets, fairs, weights and measures
For most of its inhabitants and for the surrounding countryside, Zurich was first of all a market. Read more Zurich · OriginsNeighbours and partners: Constance, Basel, Schaffhausen, Upper Germany and Italy
Who were the Zurich merchants who used these routes? The HLS article on merchants gives the outline. Read more Zurich · OriginsThe Old Zurich War and the struggle for the eastern route
The central political crisis of fifteenth-century Zurich was, at its root, a struggle over the eastern trade corridor. Read more Zurich · OriginsFrom the war to the Reformation: recovery within limits
The seven decades between the peace of 1450 and the beginning of Zwingli’s ministry at the Grossmünster in 1519 were a period of recovery within limits. Read more Zurich · OriginsWhat the routes left behind: transit, trade and the financial centre
It remains to ask what the transit and trade function of the medieval city contributed to Zurich’s later role as a financial centre. Read more Zurich · OriginsMoney, coinage and credit in late medieval Zurich — overview and summary
A modern visitor who walks from Paradeplatz down the Bahnhofstrasse passes, within a few hundred metres, the head offices of the country’s largest bank, the Swiss National Bank’s branch premises and… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe abbess’s penny: the Zurich mint from the eleventh century to 1425
The history of Zurich money begins with the Fraumünster. King Louis the German founded the abbey on 21 July 853 as a royal house for his daughter Hildegard, endowing it with the royal court at… Read more Zurich · OriginsMany coins, one market: currencies, conventions and money-changing
Late medieval Zurich lived with monetary plurality. The local penny circulated alongside the coins of neighbouring mints, of which there were many: the bishops of Constance and Basel, the abbeys of… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe prohibition of usury and the Rentenkauf
The medieval Church condemned the taking of interest on a loan. Drawing on the Old Testament prohibition of lending at interest to a brother, on the saying of Christ in Luke 6:35 (“lend, hoping for… Read more Zurich · OriginsHow credit worked in practice
In a society where most wealth consisted of land and the rights attached to it, credit was above all land credit. The Historical Dictionary distinguishes several medieval forms of pledge. Read more Zurich · OriginsJewish lenders in Zurich
Jews are documented in Swiss towns from the second half of the twelfth century, first in Geneva, then from 1213 in Basel and subsequently in Zurich, St Gall and other towns. Read more Zurich · OriginsLombards and Cahorsins in Zurich and the Swiss towns
The Christian professional lenders of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries came from two regions: northern Italy, above all Piedmont and Lombardy, with Asti as a leading centre, and southern… Read more Zurich · OriginsThe city as borrower and taxpayer: public finance
Public finance in the modern sense requires written accounts. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland dates the emergence of public budgets in the sources to the spread of written administration:… Read more Zurich · OriginsBuying a territory: pledges and the price of Kyburg
Between the middle of the fourteenth century and the end of the fifteenth, Zurich built one of the largest city states north of the Alps. Read more Zurich · OriginsPensions and the finance of mercenary service, 1474–1516
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a new source of money flowed into the Confederation and transformed its public and private finances: the payments of foreign powers for Swiss soldiers. Read more Zurich · OriginsLegacy for the financial centre
Late medieval Zurich had no bank, no stock exchange and no merchant house of international standing. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalHuldrych Zwingli and the Zurich Reformation (1519–1531) — overview and summary
On 1 January 1519, his thirty-fifth birthday, a priest from the Toggenburg climbed into the pulpit of the Grossmünster and announced that he would preach through the Gospel of Matthew from beginning… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalFrom Wildhaus to the Grossmünster
Zwingli was born on 1 January 1484 in Wildhaus, a village high in the Toggenburg valley, then a territory of the prince-abbot of St. Gallen. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe printer’s kitchen: the sausage affair of 1522 and the business of print
The first public breach with church law in Zurich took place in the workshop of a printer. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Council as judge of doctrine: the disputations of 1523
By the end of 1522 the conflict over Zwingli’s preaching had reached a point at which the council could no longer leave it to the ordinary ecclesiastical process. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalAgainst foreign money: mercenary service, pensions and the French alliance
The political economy of mercenary service and pensions in the late medieval Confederation has been described in Part A. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalChurch property becomes public property, 1523–1525
The Reformation in Zurich transferred to the civic authority the largest body of property in the territory that was not already in private hands or in the hands of the city itself. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalWorship, schooling and discipline after 1525
The year 1525 was the year in which the civic Reformation took institutional form. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalDissent from below: Anabaptists, peasants and the tithe
The civic Reformation depended on the council’s control of its pace, a control that was challenged from two directions in 1525. The first challenge came from within Zwingli’s own circle. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalKappel: war, defeat and the limits of the civic Reformation
Between 1525 and 1531 Zwingli’s influence extended into foreign policy. Zurich, isolated in the Confederation and threatened with exclusion from the Diet, sought allies among the other Reformed… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalConsequences for public finance and economic life
The Reformation changed the balance sheet of the Zurich state in a few years more profoundly than any event since the purchases of territory in the fifteenth century. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalLegacy for the financial centre
It would be anachronistic to look for the Paradeplatz in the Grossmünster of 1525. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Almosenordnung of 1525 and the public welfare state — overview and summary
In the second week of January 1525, while the Zurich council was still absorbing the property of the religious houses it had closed a few weeks earlier, it adopted a short ordinance on alms. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalPoor relief before the Reformation
The late medieval understanding of almsgiving rested on a reciprocity that seemed obvious to contemporaries. The rich gave, the poor prayed, and each helped the other towards salvation. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Almosenordnung of January 1525
The ordinance was the administrative sequel to a sequence of decisions taken in the last weeks of 1524. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Almosenamt and the management of endowment assets
The ordinance of January 1525 created the purpose and the distribution machinery. The assets had to be organised separately, and here the Zurich solution was pragmatic. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalWork, begging and the obligation of the able-bodied
The prohibition of begging raised a question that the ordinance of 1525 answered only by implication: what was to become of those who could work but did not? The Reformation strengthened the answer… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalEducation: the Prophezei, the Latin schools and stipends
The second great purpose to which the secularised wealth of Zurich was devoted was education. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalZurich among the Reformed welfare orders
Zurich’s ordinance belongs to a wave of municipal welfare reforms that swept the cities of the Empire and the Low Countries between 1520 and 1530. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalFrom the Almosenamt to the foundation location: continuities
The institutions created in and after 1525 proved remarkably durable. The Almosenamt continued to supply bread, money and clothing to rural communities until 1839, while the Hinteramt in the former… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalInterest, usury and the ethics of wealth: Zwingli and Bullinger — overview and summary
Anyone who takes out a consumer loan in Zurich today signs a contract whose price is capped by federal law. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe inheritance: usury, the Rentenkauf and the Gült
The Reformers of Zurich inherited the problem of interest together with a doctrine more than a thousand years old. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalZwingli: divine and human righteousness
The first Zurich disputation of January 1523 brought official recognition of Zwingli’s teaching. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalHeinrich Bullinger and the long consolidation, 1531–1575
Heinrich Bullinger was born on 18 July 1504 in Bremgarten in the Aargau, the son of Heinrich Bullinger and Anna Wiederkehr. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe magistrate and the rate: five per cent and the Zurich credit market
The practical expression of the moderate doctrine was a maximum rate. The figure of 5 per cent had been customary for long-term credit since the fifteenth century. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalStewardship, frugality and discipline
The Zurich ethics of wealth were not confined to rules on interest. They formed part of a comprehensive programme of moral discipline, embodied in the Sittenmandate. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalCalvin’s letter of 1545: a brief comparison
The most celebrated Reformed text on interest was written in Geneva. In 1545 John Calvin replied to a request for advice from a friend, identified as Claude de Sachin (Sachinus), with a letter that… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Weber debate and what it means for Zurich
No discussion of Reformed economic ethics can avoid Max Weber. His essay Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus appeared in two parts in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalLegacy for the financial centre
The line from the sixteenth-century rate ceiling to the present runs through several stages. After 1800 the cantons initially kept the old usury rules and the 5 per cent maximum. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalZurich and Geneva: two Reformed economies compared — overview and summary
Anyone who works in Swiss finance for long enough learns to hear two dialects of the same language. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalTwo Reformations, two constitutions
The Zurich Reformation was, from its first day to its last, an affair of the city council. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalOne Reformed family: Calvin, Bullinger and the Consensus Tigurinus
The relationship between Zurich and Geneva in the sixteenth century was first of all a relationship between two churchmen. Heinrich Bullinger was the great correspondent of the Reformed world. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalOrdering daily life: the Zurich marriage court and the Genevan Consistory
Zurich’s instrument of moral discipline was a court of the state. In 1525 the council created the Ehegericht, composed of six judges: two of the city’s people’s priests and two members each of the… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalMoney, interest and the magistrate
Before Geneva could legislate on interest, it had to become a monetary authority. Under the bishops the right of coinage had belonged to the prince-bishop. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalWelfare as institution: the Hôpital général and the Bourse française
Welfare reform came early in both cities. In Zurich the council adopted the Almosenordnung in January 1525, centralising the alms of the city and funding them from the property of the dissolved… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalRefugees, printing and networks
No single factor did more to differentiate the two economies than the scale of immigration. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalGuild city and patrician republic; language and hinterland
The constitutional difference outlined in section I had economic consequences. Zurich’s government was a government of guilds. The craft guilds held a guaranteed share of seats in the councils. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Weber question revisited
Any comparison of two Reformed economies must address the thesis that Max Weber published in 1904–1905 and revised in 1920 under the title Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalLong paths: Protestant banking in Geneva, industrial finance in Zurich
After 1600 the two paths diverge further. Their later history belongs to Part C of this book and to the companion volume on Geneva. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalTwo financial centres today: contrast and common ground
The Zurich financial centre of 2026 is the largest in Switzerland by a wide margin. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe Locarno refugees of 1555 and the birth of the silk industry — overview and summary
On 3 March 1555 a column of men, women and children left Locarno, the small market town at the northern end of Lake Maggiore, and turned their backs on houses, vineyards, family tombs and a lordship… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalLocarno: a common lordship and its Protestant community
Locarno became Swiss by conquest. The Rusca family, who had held the town and its territory as a fief from the dukes of Milan, lost their dominion when Confederate troops occupied the Locarnese in… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalOver the Alps: the journey and the reception in Zurich
The exiles did not initially intend to go to Zurich. Their first stop was Roveredo in the Mesolcina, a valley under the Grey Leagues where Beccaria had found refuge five years earlier and where the… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalThe families and the terms of their integration
The Locarnese community in Zurich was small, socially mixed and bound together by kinship. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalFrom shop to Verlag: trade links, Zanino and the silk enterprise
The economic history of the Locarnesi in Zurich begins modestly, in rented shops. Aloisio Orelli, the founder of the Zurich line, is recorded in 1557 as the owner of a shop dealing in leather goods,… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalGuilds, councils and the long road to merchant banking
The failure of Zanino and the success of the Werdmüller have often been read as proof that the Locarnesi merely prepared the ground for native entrepreneurs. Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalRefugee capital: the Locarnesi and the Geneva Refuge compared
The Locarnese emigration was one current in a much larger movement. After the reorganisation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, Italian Protestants from the great commercial cities of Lucca, Genoa,… Read more Zurich · Zwingli, the Reformation and the Moral Economy of CapitalLegacy: from silk capital to financial centre
The Zurich silk industry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, organised by the merchant-manufacturers of the Saffron guild and based on the rural Verlag, is the subject of Part C. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Verlag system, proto-industry and the merchant bankers — overview and summary
In 1750 two brothers of an old Zurich family, Caspar and Hans Conrad Schulthess, opened a silk business in the house “Zum gewundenen Schwert” on the Limmatquai. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingZurich’s economy between 1600 and 1790
At the beginning of the seventeenth century Zurich was a city-state of a characteristic Swiss kind. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Verlag system in the Zurich countryside
The term Verlagssystem denotes a form of decentralised production founded on home work. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingMerchant houses as providers of credit
Every stage of the putting-out system involved credit. The merchant who imported raw cotton from the Levant or raw silk from Italy paid for it months before the finished cloth could be sold, often… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Kaufmännisches Direktorium, the post and commercial information
On 30 October 1662 the council of Zurich established the Kaufmännisches Direktorium, the Merchants’ Directorate, to organise the rapidly expanding textile trades. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingCity privileges and rural grievances
The putting-out system in Zurich operated within a political order that reserved trade and the crafts to the burghers of the city. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe merchant elite
The merchant elite of eighteenth-century Zurich was small, interrelated and remarkably stable. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingZurich capital abroad
In the Middle Ages the Swiss cities had been net importers of capital, borrowing from Lombard and Jewish lenders and from the rentiers of the Upper Rhine (see Part A). Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingEconomic thought of the Zurich Enlightenment
The Zurich Enlightenment reflected on the economy of the city-state from within its ruling class. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingFrom merchant house to private bank
The history of the Schulthess house with which this chapter opened illustrates how merchant houses became banks. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingLeu & Co. (1755) and the state as investor — overview and summary
On 15 April 1755 a small committee of Zurich magistrates began to receive money in a single room of the town hall on the Limmat. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingA republic with money to spare: Zurich’s public finances in the eighteenth century
The Zurich state of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a city republic that ruled a sizeable rural territory. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingJohann Jacob Leu: magistrate, jurist and lexicographer
Johann Jacob Leu was born in Zurich on 26 January 1689, the son of Hans Jacob Leu, a member of the council and bailiff, and of Dorothea Heidegger. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe founding of the Zinskommission, 1750–1755
The immediate origins of the commission lie in deliberations of the early 1750s. According to the Neue Deutsche Biographie, Leu, as a member of a commission appointed to address the surplus of… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingOrganisation, mandate and governance
The Zinskommission had a two-tier structure. An extended commission, presided over by Leu and consisting of nine further members of the councils, met quarterly and set general policy. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe portfolio: lending to the sovereigns of Europe
The first investments of 1755 set the pattern for the following four decades. The commission bought French obligations, English annuities and paper of the Vienna Stadtbank. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe shadow side of the portfolio: colonial entanglements and the archive
For most of the twentieth century the history of Leu & Co. was written by the bank itself, in the jubilee volumes of Julius Landmann (1905) and Theo Keller (1955). Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingOther republics, other models: Bern, Basel, St. Gallen and Geneva
Zurich was neither the first nor the largest Swiss investor on the European capital market. That distinction belongs to Bern. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingRevolution, occupation and privatisation, 1798
The collapse of the old Confederation in 1798 is the subject of Chapter C.III, and only its consequences for the commission are considered here. French troops entered Zurich on 27 April 1798. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingFrom Leu & Cie. to the Aktiengesellschaft Leu & Co.: the nineteenth century
The first half of the nineteenth century transformed the former commission into a domestic institution. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingBank Leu in the twentieth century and its absorption into Credit Suisse
By the beginning of the twentieth century Leu had grown into one of the leading banks of the country. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe legacy: the state as investor from 1755 to the present
The Zinskommission of 1755 was an early answer to a question that every prosperous small state eventually confronts: what should a public authority do with capital that exceeds its immediate needs,… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingRevolution, Helvetic Republic, Mediation and Restoration — overview and summary
On 5 June 1798 French soldiers opened the vault beneath the Grossmünster in Zurich, in which the republic of the guilds had kept its reserve of coin, and carried the contents away. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Stäfner Handel and the end of the old regime
By the last decades of the eighteenth century the villages on the shores of Lake Zurich had become some of the most prosperous rural communities in Europe. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe French invasion, the state treasure and the war of 1799
The French invasion of the spring of 1798 was directed first against Bern. General Alexis Balthasar Henri Antoine von Schauenburg organised the operations. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Helvetic Republic: unitary state, freedoms and fiscal failure
On 12 April 1798, in Aarau, 121 deputies from ten cantons constituted the Helvetic Republic, one and indivisible, on the basis of a constitution drafted in Paris. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Mediation: the canton restored
The Act of Mediation of 19 February 1803, drawn up by Napoleon Bonaparte with the Helvetic Consulta that he had summoned to Paris, served as the fundamental law of Switzerland from 10 March 1803… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingRestoration: the Federal Treaty and the return of the patriciate
The collapse of Napoleon’s power after the battle of Leipzig in October 1813 gave the conservative forces in Switzerland the opportunity to reverse part of the revolutionary settlement. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Ustertag and the liberal regeneration
The July Revolution in Paris in 1830 gave the signal for a wave of constitutional movements in the Swiss cantons. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingMoney and public finance under successive regimes
Between 1798 and 1848 Zurich lived under five monetary regimes in rapid succession. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe legacy for the financial centre
The half-century between the Stäfa memorial and the federal state left Zurich with an institutional inheritance that its later financial centre would draw on in several ways. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe Federal State of 1848 and the Swiss franc — overview and summary
Every transaction booked in Zurich today, whether a foreign-exchange swap on a trading floor at Paradeplatz, a mortgage drawn down at a cantonal bank or a custody fee debited in a private bank on the… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingFrom the Sonderbund War to the Federal Constitution of 1848
The Confederation that emerged from the Congress of Vienna under the Federal Pact of 1815 was an alliance of twenty-two sovereign cantons with a common Diet (Tagsatzung), a rotating directorial… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe economic constitution of 1848: a single market
Before 1848 the Swiss internal market existed only in a very limited sense. The Federal Pact of 1815 had left customs matters essentially to the cantons. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingMonetary disorder before 1850
Switzerland had experienced a unified currency once before 1850. During the Helvetic Republic, the authorities introduced a decimal system in which one franc was divided into ten batzen of ten rappen… Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingGulden or franc? The currency debate of 1849 and 1850
The Constitution of 1848 settled the question of competence in two sentences. Article 36 provided: “Dem Bunde steht die Ausübung aller im Münzregale begriffenen Rechte zu. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingImplementing the reform: minting abroad, the great exchange and the federal mint
The Confederation had no mint capable of producing the required volume of coin in time. Speiser, who had written the expert opinion, was also charged with its implementation. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingFrom silver to bimetallism: the Latin Monetary Union
The Coinage Act of 1850 had scarcely taken effect when the international monetary environment changed fundamentally. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingBanks of issue before 1907
The Coinage Act of 1850 regulated coins. Paper money, a different matter, remained for more than half a century in the hands of a variety of cantonal and private banks. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingZurich, Basel and Geneva: three financial places at mid-century
At the time of the founding of the federal state, Zurich was not the leading financial place of Switzerland. Geneva and Basel had older and more internationally connected banking communities. Read more Zurich · From Merchant Capital to BankingThe legacy for the financial centre
The first legacy of the period is the single economic area. The Constitution of 1848 created, within a few years, a customs union, a unified postal system, a common standard of weights and measures,… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherAlfred Escher, the Nordostbahn and railway finance — overview and summary
Anyone who leaves Zurich’s main railway station by its southern portal walks past a bronze figure standing high on a fountain. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherAlfred Escher: family, fortune and formation
Johann Heinrich Alfred Escher was born in Zurich on 20 February 1819 into the Escher vom Glas, one of the old patrician families of the city, whose members had held guild offices, sat in the councils… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe railway question, 1836–1852
Switzerland came late to the railway age. Business circles in Zurich and Basel discussed projects to link the two cities, and thereby the Rhine and the emerging networks of France and Germany, from… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Schweizerische Nordostbahn
Escher did not wait for the Railway Act to be in force before organising a Zurich company. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherForeign capital and the search for a domestic source of finance
The capital needs of the Swiss railways far exceeded the savings that the Swiss market could mobilise through the existing private banks. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe “Escher system” and its critics
By the early 1860s Escher’s position in Zurich rested on an interlocking set of roles that no rival could match. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherOverexpansion and crisis in the 1870s
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 exposed the weaknesses of a network planned by competing private companies under cantonal concessions. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherFrom private railways to the SBB, 1883–1902
Escher died at Belvoir on 6 December 1882, a few months after the Gotthard line had opened without him. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe legacy for the financial centre
The first and most durable legacy of the railway era is the connection between infrastructure and the capital market. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherSchweizerische Kreditanstalt (1856): the universal bank model — overview and summary
For almost a century and a half, the sandstone palace on the north side of Paradeplatz served as the visual shorthand for Swiss banking. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe models: the crédit mobilier in France and Germany
The institutional idea that Escher brought to Zurich originated in the Paris of the Second Empire. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherRailways, foreign capital and the decision to found a Swiss bank
The immediate occasion for the foundation of the Kreditanstalt lay in the railway policy of the young federal state. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe foundation of July 1856
The Schweizerische Kreditanstalt was constituted in Zurich on 5 July 1856. The English-language encyclopaedic literature gives the same date of foundation and adds that the bank opened for business… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherEarly business, 1856–1870
The first and most important field of business was the financing of railways. The historical encyclopaedia describes the Kreditanstalt as a bank specialising in commercial credit and in the issuing… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherGovernance, the state and the democratic critique
The early Kreditanstalt was governed in a manner that would be unthinkable under modern banking law. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherCrises and consolidation, 1870–1914
By the end of the Franco-German War of 1870 and 1871, the Kreditanstalt had become the largest bank in Switzerland. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe other Zurich banks of the era
The Kreditanstalt did not remain alone for long. In 1862, the Bank in Winterthur began business with an initial share capital of 5 million francs. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe universal bank as the Swiss model
The term “universal bank” describes an institution that combines, within one legal entity, the collection of deposits and savings, the granting of short- and long-term credit to commerce and… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLegacy and forward look: from Kreditanstalt to Credit Suisse
The later history of the Kreditanstalt lies outside the period of this chapter and is told in Parts F and G. A brief outline shows how long the institutional pattern of the founding decades endured. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Polytechnikum (1855) and the human capital of the financial centre — overview and summary
A financial centre is usually described through its institutions: its banks and insurers, its exchange, its central bank, its regulators and its courts. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe university article of 1848 and the compromise of 1854
The idea of a Swiss national institution of higher learning is older than the federal state. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe opening of 1855 and the burden on the seat canton
The school that opened in October 1855 was organised in specialised divisions. The standard account lists five specialist schools, for architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering,… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe early professors: an international faculty
The Polytechnikum could not have staffed its chairs from Swiss resources alone. Since Switzerland in the 1850s had few scientists and engineers of international standing, the school board recruited… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherEngineering, mathematics, actuarial science and chemistry
The link between the Polytechnikum and the insurance industry can be dated with some precision. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe University of Zurich, legal education and economics
The Polytechnikum did not arrive in an academic vacuum. Zurich had possessed a cantonal university since 29 April 1833, founded in the first years of the liberal regeneration described in Chapter… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherKnowledge networks between academia, industry and finance
The industrial landscape of Zurich in 1855 was dominated by textiles and by the machine-building firms that had grown out of them. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherFrom Polytechnikum to Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (1905–1911)
By the end of the nineteenth century the Polytechnikum had outgrown the framework of 1854. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe legacy: ETH Zurich and human capital as a location factor
The school of 1855 with fewer than seventy students has become an institution with about 27,000 students and doctoral candidates. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Zurich Stock Exchange and securities regulation — overview and summary
Anyone who walks today from Paradeplatz down the Bahnhofstrasse towards the lake passes, at the corner of the Börsenstrasse, a Neo-Renaissance building with a rounded corner tower that now houses a… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherBefore the exchange: merchants, brokers and bills of exchange
Zurich had markets long before it had an exchange. The need for intermediaries who brought buyers and sellers together was felt first in the trade in goods and in bills of exchange. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Börsenverein of 1855 and the first Zurich market in securities
The decisive step in Zurich was taken in 1855, when merchants of the city founded the Börsenverein Zürich. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Effektenbörsenverein and the first exchange building
When exactly the Zurich stock exchange was founded is a question without a single answer. Each of the dates found in the literature marks a different stage in a gradual process. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherSpeculation and crash: the railway crisis of the 1870s
The Zurich exchange building was designed and begun during the worst crisis that Swiss railway securities experienced in the nineteenth century. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe cantonal law of 1883 on securities brokers and exchange agents
The first cantonal statute on the Zurich exchange was adopted by the voters of the canton on 2 December 1883. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe ring and the working of the exchange
The method by which securities were traded in Zurich from the late nineteenth century until 1996 was the ring. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Swiss Code of Obligations of 1881 and the law of companies
The exchange could trade only in securities that the law allowed to be created. Before 1883, the law of companies was cantonal. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherWhat Zurich traded: railways, banks, industry, the state and foreign issuers
Railway shares and bonds were the foundation of the Zurich market. As the largest issues with the widest ownership, they had prices that the whole country watched as a barometer of economic… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Wertpapiergesetz of 1896 and the reform of 1912
The railway fever of around 1890 and the difficulties of the following years led to a revision of the Zurich exchange legislation. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherZurich, Basel and Geneva: competition among cantonal exchanges
Before 1914 Switzerland had no national exchange. Each of the larger commercial cantons had its own market, governed by its own law and serving its own community of banks and investors. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherTaxing the exchange: stamp duties before 1917
Taxes on securities transactions have been a recurring theme in the history of the Swiss exchanges. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLegacy: from cantonal regulation to federal law and SIX
The first exchange building on the Bahnhofstrasse served until 1930. It was replaced by a new building in the so-called Börsenblock between the Talstrasse and the Schanzengraben, designed and built… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherZürcher Kantonalbank (1870) and the democratic movement — overview and summary
Whoever walks along the Bahnhofstrasse from the main station towards the lake passes, a few steps before Paradeplatz, a long modernist building with a public hall, a bronze-grey façade and an iron… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe democratic movement of the 1860s
The democratic movement of 1867 had older roots. Its programme had been formulated two decades earlier by men who belonged to the radical wing of the liberal camp and who concluded that the… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe cantonal constitution of 1869
The elections to the constitutional council on 8 March 1868 took place with a turnout of 94 per cent. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherCheap credit for farmers and small trades
The economic argument for a cantonal bank rested on the structure of rural credit in the canton. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Kantonalbank law of 1869 and the opening of the bank
The law that gave the bank its legal form was drafted in the summer and autumn of 1869 and submitted to the people under the new constitution. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherEarly business, 1870–1914
The bank had hardly opened when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870 and disrupted the money and capital markets of Europe. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe cantonal bank model in Switzerland
The Zürcher Kantonalbank was neither the first nor the only cantonal bank. The HLS distinguishes two waves of foundations. The first cantonal bank was established in Bern in 1834. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Zürcher Kantonalbank in the twentieth century
The statutory mandate kept the Zürcher Kantonalbank out of the speculative ventures that brought several Swiss banks to grief in the interwar period. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Zürcher Kantonalbank today: law, governance and supervision
The current constitution of the canton of Zurich, adopted on 27 February 2005 and in force since 1 January 2006, contains in Article 109 the sentence: “Der Kanton betreibt eine Kantonalbank.” The… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherComparisons: Leu & Co. and the German public banks
The two state banks of Zurich’s history were designed for opposite purposes. Leu & Co., founded in 1755 as the Zinskommission of the city-state, managed the surplus funds of the state and of private… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLegacy for the financial centre
The democratic movement of the 1860s left Zurich three legacies that shape its financial centre today. The first is institutional. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Gotthard railway and international capital — overview and summary
When a Zurich bank today arranges a syndicated loan for a foreign infrastructure project, when a Swiss law firm drafts an intercreditor agreement for lenders from three jurisdictions or when a… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Alpine transit question
The idea of a railway through the Alps was as old as the Swiss railway itself. Already in the late 1840s and early 1850s engineers and cantonal governments were drawing lines across the passes. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Gotthard conference of 1869 and the treaty of 15 October 1869
The diplomatic preparations took most of the 1860s. After Italy had indicated its preference for the Gotthard and the German states had come round to the same view, the Swiss Federal Council, pressed… Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft and its capital
Once the German accession had completed the treaty framework, the Gotthard association transferred its rights to a company founded for the purpose. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherBuilding the line: Favre’s contract and the summit tunnel
The summit tunnel between Göschenen in Uri and Airolo in Ticino was the heart of the project and its greatest risk. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLabour, death and the Göschenen strike of 1875
The financial history of the Gotthard cannot be separated from the conditions under which the tunnel was built, because the pressure of Favre’s contract passed directly to the men at the face. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe cost crisis of 1876 and the refinancing
The revelation came in 1876. After the redesign of the ramps and the first years of experience with the tunnel, Hellwag produced a new estimate of the cost to complete. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherEscher’s fall
The crisis destroyed the position of the man who had created the project. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland describes Escher’s last years as marked by setbacks. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherBreakthrough, opening and the profitable decades
The two headings of the summit tunnel met on 29 February 1880. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung announced the event the next day with a single word: “Durch!”. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherNationalisation and the Gotthard treaty of 1909
The nationalisation of the main Swiss railways, approved in the popular vote of 20 February 1898, is treated in Chapter D.I. The Gotthard presented a special case because of the treaty of 1869. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLessons for project finance and public-private partnership
Read with the eyes of a modern transaction lawyer, the Gotthard contains almost every element of a present-day infrastructure financing. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherThe Gotthard base tunnel and the FinöV fund: a comparison
More than a century after the opening of the first Gotthard tunnel, Switzerland built a second, much longer tunnel under the same massif. Read more Zurich · The Age of Alfred EscherLegacy for Zurich as a centre for international transaction finance
The Gotthard left Zurich a double legacy. The first was institutional experience. The Kreditanstalt had led an international syndicate, negotiated with German and Italian banks as an equal, handled… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Rentenanstalt (1857) and life insurance — overview and summary
On the General-Guisan-Quai, a few hundred metres from the point where the Bahnhofstrasse meets the lake, stands the head office of Swiss Life, the largest life insurer in Switzerland. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLife insurance before 1857
When the federal state was created in 1848, Swiss households that wished to secure a lump sum for their dependants on death, or a life annuity for their own old age, had no domestic life insurer to… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe foundation of the Rentenanstalt in 1857
Johann Conrad Widmer was born on 16 July 1818 in Altnau in the canton of Thurgau, the son of a physician. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubMutual structure, actuarial principles and surplus participation
The Rentenanstalt was conceived from the start as an institution that belonged to its insured members. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGrowth to 1914
The Rentenanstalt looked beyond Switzerland within a decade of its foundation. The Swiss market was small, and a life insurer's security grows with the number of lives it insures, because the law of… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, inflation and the interwar period
The First World War did not touch Swiss territory, but it affected the Rentenanstalt through its policyholders and its foreign business. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Swiss life insurance market
The Rentenanstalt was the first Swiss life insurer, but it did not remain alone for long. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe BVG era and group life business
The occupational pension business, which the Rentenanstalt had begun with the Zurich schoolteachers in 1858 and developed through the group contracts of the interwar years, became a legal obligation… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubDemutualisation, crisis and reinvention
In the 1990s the Rentenanstalt set out to become a financial services group. It pursued a strategy of Allfinanz, the combination of insurance, banking and asset management under one roof, and in 1995… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLife insurance in private wealth planning
For the lawyer, the life insurance policy is also a legal instrument with distinctive effects. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The Rentenanstalt left the Zurich financial centre four legacies. The first is institutional. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re (1863) and the global reinsurance market — overview and summary
Of all the institutions that give Zurich its standing as a financial centre, the one least visible to the general public may well be the most international. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Glarus fire of 1861 and the insurance gap
On the evening of 10 May 1861 a fire broke out in Glarus, the capital of the small canton of the same name, at around half past nine. A föhn storm was blowing down the Linth valley that night. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe foundation of the Schweizerische Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft (1863)
The central figure in the foundation was Moritz Grossmann. Born in Galicia in 1830 as the son of a physician, educated in commerce, mathematics and languages, he had worked in the insurance business… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSan Francisco 1906 and the making of a global reputation
Early on the morning of 18 April 1906 an earthquake struck San Francisco. The shaking itself caused considerable damage, but the fires that followed and burned for several days did far more. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, expansion and controversy (1914–1945)
The First World War cut the international insurance links that had grown during the nineteenth century. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubPost-war expansion and the one-company strategy (1946–2000)
The Second World War ended with a Europe divided and many markets closed to private reinsurers. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe twenty-first century: 9/11, GE Insurance Solutions and the financial crisis
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 produced what Swiss Re describes as the costliest insured man-made loss in the history of the industry. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re Institute, sigma and the group in 2025
Among the assets that Swiss Re has built in Zurich, one is intellectual. The economics department established in 1968 developed into the publisher of sigma, a series of studies on insurance markets… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe economics of reinsurance
Reinsurance is often described, in Swiss Re’s own shorthand, as “insurance for insurance companies”. The formula is correct as far as it goes. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubForms of reinsurance
The practice of reinsurance distinguishes contracts along two axes. The first concerns the way in which risks are brought under the contract. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe law of reinsurance in Switzerland
The Swiss Federal Act on Insurance Contracts of 2 April 1908 (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz, VVG, SR 221.229.1) contains a short provision that defines the legal framework for the entire reinsurance… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubContract practice and arbitration
Reinsurance contracts are negotiated between professionals, usually through brokers. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCatastrophe risk, climate and modelling
Catastrophe risk is where reinsurance is indispensable. The losses from a major earthquake or hurricane can exceed the capital of all insurers in the affected region, so that only the global… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubZurich as a reinsurance centre
Swiss Re is the anchor of a reinsurance centre that comprises many other companies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The founding of Swiss Re in 1863 has left several legacies in Zurich. The first is institutional. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubZurich Insurance Group (1872) and industrial insurance — overview and summary
A visitor who walks south along the western shore of the lake from the Bürkliplatz reaches, after some ten minutes, a long neo-Baroque palace facing the water at Mythenquai 2. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Versicherungs-Verein of 1872 and the turn to accident insurance
The prehistory of Zurich Insurance begins with Swiss exports. In the decades after 1848 the textile, silk and machinery manufacturers of north-eastern Switzerland shipped their goods across the Alps… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLiability, factories and the state: Swiss accident law from 1875 to 1918
Zurich Insurance grew up inside a legal revolution. Before the 1870s, a worker injured in a Swiss factory or on a railway could recover damages only if he proved the fault of the employer or of a… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubAn international accident insurer, 1900–1945
The most consequential decision of the Meyer era was the entry into the United States. Zurich obtained its American licences in December 1912, when the State of New York granted authorisation. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom Zurich Insurance Company to Zurich Financial Services, 1955–2000
In 1955 the company dropped the reference to accident and liability from its name and became Zurich Insurance Company, in German Zürich Versicherungs-Gesellschaft. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCrisis and recovery, 2000–2016
The expansion of the late 1990s left Zurich exposed on several fronts at once. The integration of the Scudder and Kemper fund businesses proved difficult because the two firms had different corporate… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe group in 2025 and 2026
The annual report for 2025, the latest published at the time of writing, shows Zurich at the strongest point in its history. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsuring industry: the lines of corporate risk
Industrial insurance is a different trade from the mass business of motor and household policies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGovernance, capital and group supervision
The group’s legal structure has two Swiss levels. At the top stands Zurich Insurance Group Ltd, the holding company whose shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe commercial insurance market in Zurich
Zurich shares with Munich the distinction of being home to both a global primary insurer and a global reinsurer of the first rank. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubIndustrial insurance under the revised Insurance Contract Act
Switzerland’s Federal Act on Insurance Contracts (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz, VVG, SR 221.229.1) dates from 1908 and entered into force in 1910. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubD&O insurance and Swiss company law after 2023
The demand for D&O insurance in Switzerland follows the liability regime of the Code of Obligations. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy
The history of Zurich Insurance shows the interplay of law and business that runs through the whole of this Part. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance supervision: from the 1885 Act to the Swiss Solvency Test — overview and summary
Every insurer, reinsurer and insurance broker that does business from Zurich today works under a supervisory regime whose roots reach back to the constitutional revision of 1874. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe constitutional mandate of 1874 and the Act of 1885
The federal state of 1848 left commercial and trade regulation largely to the cantons. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Federal Insurance Office and the first decades of supervision
The authority entrusted with the application of the Act was the Eidgenössisches Versicherungsamt, the Federal Insurance Office, which began its work in Bern in 1886. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Insurance Contract Act of 1908
Supervision of undertakings and the law of the insurance contract were separate matters in Swiss legal thinking from the beginning. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubWar, inflation and security: the legislation of 1919 and 1930
The First World War and its aftermath exposed a weakness that the Act of 1885 had not addressed. Licensing and annual reporting told the supervisor whether an undertaking was solvent on paper. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom the Act of 1978 to the European agreements
The Act of 1885 remained the legal basis of Swiss insurance supervision for more than ninety years, supplemented by the security statutes and by an extensive body of ordinances and administrative… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCrisis and reform: the Insurance Supervision Act of 2004
By the end of the 1990s Swiss insurance law consisted of five separate federal statutes: the Act of 1978, the Kautionsgesetz of 1919, the Sicherstellungsgesetz of 1930 and the two Swisslex statutes… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe Swiss Solvency Test
The Swiss Solvency Test is the best-known product of the reform. Its development began before the new statute was adopted. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFINMA and integrated supervision since 2009
The Federal Office of Private Insurance did not survive the reform decade as an independent body. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSolvency II and the equivalence decision of 2015
The Swiss Solvency Test and the European Union’s Solvency II framework developed in parallel and influenced each other. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubThe revised Insurance Supervision Act in force since 1 January 2024
The Act of 2004 had been designed in the aftermath of a crisis and reflected the priorities of that moment: solvency, governance and the responsible actuary. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSupervision in practice: enforcement and conduct
Solvency supervision rarely makes headlines, because its successes consist of crises that do not occur. Enforcement in the field of conduct is more visible. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubGroups, conglomerates and systemic importance
The supervision of insurance groups became a central topic after the crisis of 2001 and 2002, when it became evident that problems in foreign subsidiaries and in the holding structure could threaten… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwitzerland, Solvency II and the Insurance Capital Standard compared
The Swiss Solvency Test, Solvency II and the IAIS Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) share the same starting point: a market-adjusted valuation of assets and liabilities and a capital requirement… Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy and a practitioner’s view
Looking back over 140 years, the continuity of Swiss insurance supervision is striking. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance-linked securities, captives, pensions and insurance wrappers — overview and summary
The four chapters that precede this one tell the story of three great Zurich insurance houses and of the supervisory law that grew up around them. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubFrom reinsurance to securities: the origins of catastrophe bonds
The idea that insurance risk could be sold directly to investors is older than the catastrophe bond. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubSwiss Re, the Zurich managers and the size of the market
When the asset manager GAM and Swiss Re announced a partnership for GAM’s catastrophe bond fund range in April 2025, the press release gave a figure that illustrates Swiss Re’s place in the market. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubRegulating the investment side: managers, funds and pension investors
A manager in Zurich that invests in catastrophe bonds for clients is, in Swiss law, an asset manager like any other. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance special purpose vehicles under the revised Insurance Supervision Act
For more than a quarter of a century, the special purpose vehicles through which Swiss sponsors and Swiss investors participated in the catastrophe bond market were almost all domiciled abroad. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubCaptive insurers
A captive is an insurance or reinsurance company owned by a group whose main business lies outside insurance, which it uses to insure or reinsure the risks of its own group companies. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubPensions under the BVG as institutional investors
The Swiss pension system rests on the principle of three pillars, which the Federal Constitution has contained since 1972. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubInsurance wrappers for international private clients
The insurance wrapper is the point at which the insurance industry meets the private banking tradition of Zurich and Geneva most directly. Read more Zurich · The Insurance and Reinsurance HubLegacy: the convergence of insurance and capital markets in Zurich
Each of the four channels described in this chapter has grown from its own roots and operates within its own legal framework. Taken together, they tell a single story about Zurich. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Swiss National Bank, the First World War and the interwar crisis — overview and summary
Anyone who walks from Paradeplatz down Börsenstrasse towards the lake passes a sober neoclassical building with a stone façade, tall windows and no advertising of any kind. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe long road to a central bank
The Swiss franc, introduced by the federal coinage law of 1850, had a single federal coinage from the beginning, while paper money remained a matter for the banks. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyBern, Zurich and the opening of 20 June 1907
The seat question, which had contributed to the failure of 1897, was solved in 1905 by division. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe First World War
The international gold standard, which had seemed a permanent feature of the world economy, collapsed within a few days in the summer of 1914. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe general strike of November 1918
The social crisis of the last war year reached the financial centre itself before it reached the rest of the country. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe 1920s: the hard franc and the rise of Zurich
The immediate post-war years were a period of monetary and economic turbulence. The Swiss franc, which had held its value during the war better than the currencies of the belligerents, was at first… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe banking crisis of the 1930s
The world economic crisis reached the European banking systems in the spring of 1931. In May the Austrian Creditanstalt, the largest bank of the former Habsburg monarchy, collapsed. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyGold bloc, deflation and the devaluation of 1936
While Britain left the gold standard in September 1931 and the United States devalued the dollar in 1933 and 1934, Switzerland held to its parity. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy: what the years 1907 to 1936 left in Zurich
The first three decades of the Swiss National Bank left a legacy that can still be traced in the law, the institutions and the habits of the Zurich financial centre. Four elements stand out. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Banking Act of 1934 and banking secrecy — overview and summary
Few Swiss statutes have acquired a reputation that reaches so far beyond their text as the Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks of 8 November 1934. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe banking crisis and the call for supervision
Switzerland entered the twentieth century without any federal supervision of its commercial banks. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks of 8 November 1934
The legislative work began in earnest in 1932 and 1933, under the pressure of the failures just described. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyArticle 47: the criminal protection of banking secrecy
Article 47 stood in the penal chapter of the Act, among provisions that punished the publication of false accounts, the refusal to provide information to the auditors and other breaches of the… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe legend and the documented history
On the afternoon of 26 or 27 October 1932, depending on the account, the French police entered the Paris premises used by representatives of the Basler Handelsbank and caught its officers in the act… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyBanking secrecy as a civil-law duty and as a criminal norm
Long before 1934 the discretion of bankers was an established custom. Vogler describes the emergence of a pronounced relationship of trust between banks and clients that became usage in the manner of… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturySecrecy as a business model
The commercial logic of banking secrecy was established well before 1934. Guex shows that after the First World War foreign capital, especially from France, Germany, Italy and Austria, poured into… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturySecrecy as a political symbol
Banking secrecy was contested in Swiss domestic politics from the beginning. The parliamentary votes on the war taxes of 1915 and 1920, recorded in section I, show that the question of the tax… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Federal Banking Commission from 1935 to 2009
The Federal Banking Commission began its work in 1935 with a mandate that its first president described as difficult. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe turning point of 2009: an outlook
This book tells the end of banking secrecy for foreign clients in Part G, and only the outline of the turning point needs to be recorded here. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy and a practitioner’s view
For a Zurich practitioner in 2026, Article 47 is a provision of daily practical relevance. It remains the criminal backbone of the duty of confidentiality that every Swiss bank owes its clients. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Second World War: gold, looted assets and the Bergier Commission — overview and summary
No period of Swiss financial history has been examined as closely as the six years between September 1939 and May 1945. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyAn economy under encirclement, 1939–1945
Switzerland entered the war as a highly industrialised country without raw materials, dependent on imports for most of its coal, iron, oil and a large part of its food. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe gold of the Reichsbank
The figures on which all later discussion rests were established by the Independent Commission of Experts in a statistical overview published in December 1997 and refined in its interim report on… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe commercial banks, the securities market and German camouflage
The Zurich big banks entered the war weakened by a decade of losses on their German business. In the 1920s the Swiss banks had lent heavily to German industry, municipalities and banks. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyRefugee policy, flight capital and the assets of the persecuted
A chapter on gold and banks might seem an odd place for a discussion of refugee policy. The connection is nevertheless close. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyAllied pressure: Safehaven, blacklists and the Currie mission
From 1943 onwards, as the military situation turned in favour of the Allies, the pressure on Switzerland shifted from the Axis to the Allied side. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Washington Agreement of 1946 and the settlement of 1952
The Currie agreement resolved some of the disputes but left the most important ones open. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe return of the past: the Independent Commission of Experts
The questions that the governments of 1946 and 1952 had considered settled came back in the mid-1990s with a speed and intensity that no one had foreseen. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyPublic debate and the Swiss self-image
The intensity of the debate of the late 1990s can only be understood against the background of the memory that it challenged. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy for the financial centre
The most obvious legacy of the war years and of their reappraisal in the 1990s is reputational. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe post-war boom, the “gnomes of Zurich” and the Euromarkets — overview and summary
The quarter of a century that followed the Second World War made Zurich a household name in finance far beyond Switzerland. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyBretton Woods and a country outside it
The conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 set up the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the two institutions that were… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe post-war boom and Zurich as an international asset manager
The growth of the Swiss banking system after 1945 was spectacular even by the standards of the European economic miracle. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe “gnomes of Zurich”
The phrase that attached itself to the Zurich bankers was older than the crisis that made it famous. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyFrom the London gold pool to the Zurich gold market
Under the Bretton Woods system the United States undertook to convert dollars held by foreign monetary authorities into gold at 35 dollars an ounce. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Euromarkets, fiduciary deposits and the Swiss franc foreign bond
The Euromarkets, whose growth dominated international finance from the late 1950s onwards, were markets in deposits and loans denominated in a currency other than that of the country in which the… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe 1970s: floating, negative interest and the defence of the franc
The strains that had shown themselves in the gold market in 1968 reached the exchange markets in the following years. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Zurich stock exchange and the creation of SOFFEX
The Zurich stock exchange, whose nineteenth-century origins are described in Part D, grew with the rest of the financial centre after the war and remained the largest of the Swiss exchanges. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy: asset management, gold and the safe-haven franc
The most important legacy of the post-war decades is the position of Zurich as one of the world’s leading centres for the management of private wealth. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyChiasso (1977) and the birth of Swiss anti-money-laundering law — overview and summary
On 14 April 1977 the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, one of the three Swiss big banks and headquartered in Zurich, issued a short press communiqué that set off the most consequential banking scandal in… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyChiasso, April 1977: the bank within the bank
Chiasso was an unlikely place for a banking crisis of national dimensions. The town lies directly on the Italian border, a few kilometres from Como and less than an hour by car from Milan. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Convention on due diligence of 1977
The Chiasso affair produced the first Swiss rules on customer identification with remarkable speed. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe 1980s: drug money, the Lebanon Connection and the Kopp affair
The Chiasso affair concerned flight capital, meaning money that was legally earned but illegally exported from Italy and hidden from the Italian tax authorities. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe criminal law of 1990 and 1994
The Federal Council adopted its dispatch on the amendment of the Criminal Code on 12 June 1989. Parliament dealt with the bill within a year. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Anti-Money Laundering Act of 1997
By the mid-1990s the banks were subject to three layers of anti-money-laundering rules: the due diligence agreement, the guidelines of the Federal Banking Commission and the criminal provisions of… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyPotentate funds and the return of stolen assets
The development of Swiss money laundering law ran in parallel with a second line of practice that concerned the assets of deposed rulers. Its starting point was the fall of Ferdinand Marcos. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyZurich's institutions in the new regime
The cases described in this chapter show how often the decisive steps were taken in Zurich. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy: from self-regulation to statute
The history told in this chapter can be read as a sequence of shocks and responses. The Chiasso affair of 1977 produced the due diligence agreement. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyDormant accounts, the Volcker Committee and the 1998 settlement — overview and summary
Few episodes have shaped the modern reputation of the Swiss financial centre as deeply as the controversy over dormant accounts that broke out in the middle of the 1990s. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyDormant assets in the post-war decades
The German term nachrichtenlose Vermögen, literally assets “without news”, describes values held by a bank or another custodian whose owner can no longer be found. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Federal Decree of 1962 and its limited results
The first statutory attempt to deal with dormant assets of victims of persecution came seventeen years after the end of the war. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyRenewed pressure from 1995
Several developments combined to reopen the question in the middle of the 1990s. The end of the Cold War opened archives in Eastern Europe and in the United States and allowed survivors and heirs in… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturySwiss reactions
The Swiss government was slow to grasp the scale of the crisis. Its first institutional response came in the autumn of 1996. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Meili affair
On the evening of 8 January 1997, Christoph Meili, a security guard employed by an outside company at a building of the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich, noticed two containers of old files and… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Independent Committee of Eminent Persons
The memorandum of understanding of 2 May 1996 between the Swiss Bankers Association, the World Jewish Restitution Organization and the World Jewish Congress created a committee of six members and a… Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe class actions and the global settlement of 1998
While the Volcker Committee was beginning its work, lawyers in the United States chose a different path. On 3 October 1996 the first class action, Weisshaus v. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe Claims Resolution Tribunal in Zurich
The distribution of the funds of the Deposited Assets Class was entrusted to the Claims Resolution Tribunal, known after the settlement as CRT-II to distinguish it from the arbitral tribunal of 1997. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyInsurers and the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims
The controversy over bank accounts drew attention to a parallel problem in the insurance sector, which Part E of this book examined from the perspective of the Zurich insurers’ history. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyThe legal aftermath: Swiss rules on dormant assets today
The controversy of the 1990s exposed the absence of any general statutory framework for dormant assets in Swiss law. The first response came from the banks themselves. Read more Zurich · The Twentieth CenturyLegacy
The dormant accounts controversy was the first great reputational crisis of the Swiss financial centre in the age of globalised media and markets. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksConsolidation in the 1990s: UBS and Credit Suisse Group — overview and summary
Anyone who walked from the main station to the lake along the Bahnhofstrasse in 1990 passed the head offices or principal Zurich premises of five banks that Swiss statistics classed as big banks. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe Swiss banking landscape around 1990
At the end of the 1980s Swiss banking statistics distinguished between big banks, cantonal banks, regional and savings banks, loan associations, Raiffeisen banks, private bankers and… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe real-estate crisis of the early 1990s
The real-estate crisis of the early 1990s was the most severe domestic banking crisis in Switzerland since the 1930s. Its roots lay in the second half of the 1980s. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe end of the banking cartel
While the property market was still booming, the federal competition authorities had begun to examine the agreements through which Swiss banks coordinated their prices. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksCredit Suisse: from Kreditanstalt to Credit Suisse Group
The Kreditanstalt was the first of the Swiss big banks to commit itself to American investment banking. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe Swiss Bank Corporation and the Anglo-American road
The Swiss Bank Corporation chose a different path to the same destination. According to the Historical Dictionary, the real-estate crisis and the deregulation of the Swiss banking sector at the… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe Bankgesellschaft under pressure: Martin Ebner and the governance fight
While the Bankverein expanded abroad, the Bankgesellschaft became the stage of the most publicised shareholder conflict in Swiss corporate history. Its protagonist was Martin Ebner. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe merger of 8 December 1997
On Monday, 8 December 1997, the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation announced that they would merge. The combined bank was to be called UBS. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLong-Term Capital Management and the price of integration
The first year of the new UBS brought a crisis that exposed the weaknesses of the merged risk management. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe transatlantic bets of 2000: PaineWebber and DLJ
Two years after the merger, UBS made the largest acquisition in its history until then. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksGovernance and remuneration
The consolidation of the 1990s transformed the governance of Swiss big banks. The boards of the old banks had been composed largely of Swiss industrialists, politicians and officers who represented… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe legacy for the Zurich financial centre
The most visible legacy of the 1990s was the constellation that dominated the Zurich financial centre for a quarter of a century: two global banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, with their head offices at… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe 2008 crisis and the rescue of UBS — overview and summary
On the morning of Thursday, 16 October 2008, before the markets opened, the Federal Council, the Swiss National Bank and the Swiss Federal Banking Commission announced a package of measures designed… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe ambition: UBS’s growth strategy, 2005–2007
The UBS that entered the crisis was the product of the merger of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation in 1998 and of the acquisitions described in chapter G.I, among them the… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe anatomy of the losses
The largest part of the losses arose from a product whose name suggested maximum safety. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksSelf-examination and self-help, 2007–2008
UBS first tried to repair its balance sheet by its own means. On 10 December 2007, together with the write-downs of about USD 10 billion, it announced a set of measures that it expected to strengthen… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe rescue of 16 October 2008
The authorities had begun to prepare long before the crisis reached its climax. When the interbank market dried up on 9 August 2007, the National Bank and the Banking Commission activated the crisis… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksUnwinding the rescue
The Confederation’s investment was short-lived. On 19 August 2009 the Federal Council decided to convert the mandatory convertible notes and to sell the resulting shares. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksAccountability
The first official account of the causes of the losses came from the supervisor. On 30 September 2008, two weeks before the rescue, the Banking Commission completed a summary report on its… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksRemuneration and the political response
The remuneration conditions attached to the rescue were extended to the whole financial sector through a FINMA circular. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLegacy: the lessons that shaped too big to fail
The rescue of UBS left three lessons that later shaped Swiss regulation. The first concerned capital. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe end of banking secrecy for foreign clients — overview and summary
Between the summer of 2008 and the autumn of 2018, the Swiss financial centre abandoned a proposition that had shaped its business for most of the twentieth century. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksCross-border private banking before 2008
The cross-border private banking business that Zurich and Geneva had built after the Second World War rested on a combination of economic and legal features. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe UBS case
The investigation that brought down Swiss banking secrecy towards the United States began with an individual. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe decision of 13 March 2009 and the grey list
The UBS case unfolded against a changing international background. In the autumn of 2008 the financial crisis had shifted the attention of the leading economies to public revenues, and tax havens… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksAdministrative assistance after 2009
The procedural rules for implementing the new treaty clauses were at first laid down in an ordinance. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe prosecutions of other banks
When UBS withdrew from its cross-border business with American clients in 2008, thousands of account holders looked for another bank. Some found one. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksGermany: tax CDs and the failed withholding tax agreement
The relationship with Germany, which Part K of this book examines in detail, followed a different path. Its point of departure was the purchase of stolen data. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksFATCA
While the prosecutions dealt with the past, the United States legislated for the future. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe automatic exchange of information
FATCA had shown that automatic reporting of foreign accounts was technically feasible. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe “Weissgeldstrategie”, voluntary disclosures and domestic secrecy
As the defences of banking secrecy fell one after another, the Federal Council sought to give the financial centre a positive programme. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksConsequences for Zurich’s client base and business models
The transformation of the years 2008 to 2018 changed the economics of Swiss private banking without destroying it. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe practitioner’s perspective
For practitioners in Zurich, the transformation of the past fifteen years remains part of daily work. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksToo big to fail: the regime of 2011 and its application — overview and summary
The rescue of UBS in October 2008, described in the preceding chapter, left Switzerland with a problem that no emergency measure could solve. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe problem named: from the rescue of UBS to the expert commission
The phrase “too big to fail” had circulated in American banking policy since the rescue of Continental Illinois in 1984, but the crisis of 2008 gave it a new urgency across the world. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe legislation of 2011: Articles 7 to 10a of the Banking Act
The Federal Council moved quickly. On 13 October 2010 it instructed the finance department to prepare a consultation draft, and on 22 December 2010 it opened the consultation. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksDesignation by the Swiss National Bank
The transfer of the designation power to the Swiss National Bank gave the central bank a formal role in banking regulation that it had not possessed before. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksCapital requirements: going concern and gone concern
The capital regime adopted in 2012 translated the commission’s three layers into law. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLiquidity: from the Liquidity Ordinance to the special requirements
Liquidity was the second field of the expert commission’s package, but for several years it received less public attention than capital. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksResolution planning: emergency plans, recovery plans and resolvability
The capital and liquidity requirements aim to make failure less likely. Resolution planning deals with the case in which failure occurs nonetheless. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksBasel III and its final package
The Swiss TBTF regime was built on top of the international Basel standards. When the Basel Committee published Basel III in December 2010, Switzerland was among the first jurisdictions to implement… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe periodic reports of the Federal Council
The biennial reports under Article 52 of the Banking Act provide a running commentary on the regime by its author. Read in sequence, they show a pattern. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe regime tested: March 2023
The collapse of Credit Suisse is the subject of the next chapter, and only the aspects that concern the design of the TBTF regime are discussed here. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksComparisons: the European Union and the United Kingdom
Because the Swiss regime was developed in parallel with the resolution frameworks of the European Union and the United Kingdom, the comparison illuminates both its strengths and its peculiarities. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLegacy: TBTF in a two-bank and then a one-bank financial centre
When the Banking Act was amended in 2011, the TBTF regime addressed two banks of broadly comparable size, each with its head office in Zurich. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe collapse of Credit Suisse (March 2023) — overview and summary
On the evening of Sunday, 19 March 2023, the President of the Swiss Confederation and the head of the Federal Department of Finance appeared before the press in Bern together with the leaders of the… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe long decline
The Credit Suisse that entered the twenty-first century was the product of an ambition that had taken shape after the Chiasso scandal of 1977. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe week of 13 to 19 March 2023
The final crisis of Credit Suisse began far from Zurich. On 10 March 2023 the Californian authorities closed Silicon Valley Bank, a mid-sized lender to technology companies whose depositors had… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe emergency ordinance and the transaction
The legal architecture of the rescue rested on an ordinance of the Federal Council adopted on 16 March 2023 and amended on 19 March at 20.00 hours, while the press conference was still under way. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe write-down of the additional tier 1 instruments
Additional tier 1 instruments occupy a narrow space between debt and equity. They are perpetual subordinated bonds that count towards a bank’s going-concern capital because they absorb losses before… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksParliament, the investigation committee and the reports of the authorities
The Federal Assembly had no part in the decisions of the weekend. Its Finance Delegation, a joint body of members of both chambers, approved the guarantee credits in advance under the urgency… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksIntegration, the end of the guarantees and the litigation of shareholders
UBS completed the acquisition on 12 June 2023, which was also the last day of trading of Credit Suisse shares on the SIX Swiss Exchange and of its American depositary shares in New York. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe legacy of the collapse for Zurich
For more than a century the financial centre of Zurich had been shaped by the rivalry of two large banks whose head offices faced each other across the Paradeplatz. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksReforms after Credit Suisse — overview and summary
The weekend of 19 March 2023, described in the preceding chapter, ended with a merger that no one in Zurich had planned and few had thought possible. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe starting point: a regime tested and found wanting
The too-big-to-fail regime that entered into force in 2012, described in an earlier chapter of this Part, rested on two pillars. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe Federal Council’s report on banking stability of 10 April 2024
The Banking Act obliges the Federal Council to review the too-big-to-fail provisions periodically and to report to Parliament. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe Parliamentary Investigation Committee and the political climate
In June 2023 the Federal Assembly set up a Parliamentary Investigation Committee, an instrument used only a handful of times in the history of the federal state, to examine the conduct of the… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe package of 6 June 2025
On 6 June 2025 the Federal Council announced how it intended to translate the report of April 2024 and the findings of the Parliamentary Investigation Committee into law. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksAccountability: the senior managers regime, remuneration and clawback
Capital was the subject that attracted the attention of markets. Accountability was the subject that attracted the attention of the public. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksNew powers for FINMA
For most of its existence FINMA has been an unusual supervisor by international standards. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLiquidity: the lender of last resort, the Extended Liquidity Facility and the public liquidity backstop
Credit Suisse did not fail because its reported capital fell below the minimum. It failed because depositors and counterparties withdrew their money faster than the bank could turn its assets into… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksParliament, 2025–2026: from the committee room to the Council of States
The capital bill reached Parliament in the spring of 2026 after a year in which the political battle lines had become clear. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksThe reaction of UBS and the relocation debate
UBS has opposed the capital measures consistently since June 2025, with arguments that have remained stable while the figures have changed. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksInternational comparisons
Every participant in the Swiss debate has invoked international standards, each drawing different conclusions from them. Read more Zurich · The Big BanksOne big bank: concentration, competition and the domestic market
The reform debate has concentrated on UBS as a global bank. For many Swiss companies, households and pension funds, however, the more immediate consequence of the Credit Suisse collapse was the… Read more Zurich · The Big BanksLegacy and outlook
Three and a half years after the weekend of March 2023, the reforms after Credit Suisse have produced a substantial body of analysis and only a modest body of law in force. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingSIX and the Swiss capital market — overview and summary
A visitor who takes the tram from the main station to the Hardturm quarter in the west of Zurich today reaches the head office of SIX Group on the Pfingstweidstrasse, a building of glass and steel… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Zurich exchange after 1914
The First World War interrupted a market that had grown steadily for three decades. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFrom the ring to the screen
The transformation of the Swiss market from ring to screen has been described in Part F of this book, so that a summary suffices here. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe London experiment: virt-x
The new electronic exchange had scarcely been completed when the Swiss market faced a strategic question that went to the heart of Zurich’s position. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe creation of SIX Group and its present form
The Swiss market infrastructure of the early 2000s was divided among three companies, all owned by the banks. The SWX Group operated the stock exchange and held the Swiss stake in Eurex. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Financial Market Infrastructure Act
The Stock Exchange Act of 1995 had been written for a world of national exchanges. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingListing, prospectus and disclosure
The admission of shares to the main segment of SIX Swiss Exchange is governed by the Listing Rules, a set of regulations issued by the Regulatory Board of SIX and approved by FINMA. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe law of public takeovers
The Swiss law of public takeovers applies to public purchase offers for equity securities of companies with their registered office in Switzerland whose equity securities are at least partly listed… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingMarket abuse
Swiss law combats market abuse on two tracks. The first is criminal law, which punishes intentional insider dealing and price manipulation and is enforced by the prosecuting authorities before the… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe equivalence dispute with the European Union
The most serious political challenge to the Swiss exchange in recent decades came from Brussels. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe position of the Swiss exchange
In international comparison the Swiss exchange is a market of large companies. According to a practitioners’ survey of March 2026, SIX Swiss Exchange had a free-float market capitalisation of around… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLegacy and outlook
Looking back from 2026, the history of the Swiss capital market since 1914 can be read as a sequence of centralisations. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingAsset management, collective investment schemes and pension capital — overview and summary
For most of the twentieth century the word that described Zurich’s financial trade abroad was banking. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingZurich as an asset management centre
The most widely used measure of the industry is the Swiss Asset Management Study, which the Asset Management Association Switzerland (AMAS) publishes each year together with a consulting firm. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFrom investment trusts to the Collective Investment Schemes Act
The idea of pooling the savings of many small investors under professional management came to Switzerland from Britain and the United States. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Collective Investment Schemes Act today
The Collective Investment Schemes Act defines collective investment schemes as assets raised from investors for the purpose of collective investment and managed for their account. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Limited Qualified Investor Fund
For many years the Swiss asset management industry argued that Swiss law lacked a vehicle that could compete with the Luxembourg reserved alternative investment fund (RAIF), introduced in 2016. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFund management companies and managers of collective assets
Since 1 January 2020 the licensing of the institutions that manage funds has been governed by the Financial Institutions Act. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingAccess to the European Union and other markets
The single greatest structural handicap of Swiss asset management is the lack of access to the European single market for funds. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingPension capital as investor
No client group shapes the Swiss asset management industry as much as the occupational pension funds. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingSustainable finance
Since about 2020 the Federal Council has declared sustainable finance a strategic priority for the Swiss financial centre. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingPrivate markets in Zurich and Zug
The growth of private markets over the last three decades has given the Zurich region a second asset management profile beside the traditional bank-owned fund houses. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingTax aspects of funds
Tax law is the second great obstacle to the international competitiveness of Swiss funds after the lack of market access. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLegacy and outlook
The history described in this chapter has left Zurich with an asset management industry that is large, domestically anchored and internationally constrained. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingPrivate banking and independent asset managers under FinIA — overview and summary
Private banking is the business with which Zurich is most often identified abroad, although the city’s financial centre has always been broader than the management of private fortunes. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingZurich’s private banks and wealth managers
Zurich’s private banking landscape combines the global and the local in a way that few centres can match. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe market after 2009
The story of how Swiss private banking lost its reliance on undeclared foreign money has been told in Part G. For present purposes, three consequences matter. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe origins and architecture of FinSA and FinIA
Until 2019 Swiss law contained no general code of conduct for financial services. The duties of a bank or an asset manager towards its client followed from the law of mandate in Articles 394 et seq. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Financial Services Act in private banking practice
FinSA divides clients into three segments. Retail clients, called private clients in the Swiss terminology, receive the full protection of the Act. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Financial Institutions Act: licensing portfolio managers and trustees
FinIA arranges the financial institutions it governs in a hierarchy of licences, often described as a cascade. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingWealth managers leaving the market
The licensing requirement changed the structure of the independent asset management industry within a few years. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFINMA’s supervision and enforcement practice towards private banks
FINMA supervises banks according to a risk-oriented approach that divides them into five categories. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingServing foreign clients: the cross-border rules
Swiss law is liberal towards foreign providers that serve clients in Switzerland. FinSA and FinIA do not require a foreign bank or asset manager to obtain a Swiss licence merely because it serves… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingIndependent managers and custodian banks: outsourcing and division of labour
The relationship between an independent asset manager and a custodian bank rests on three contracts. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingCosts, consolidation and technology
The economics of private banking have changed as much as its law. Regulation has raised the fixed costs of compliance, documentation and reporting for every institution. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Asian dimension
The most important change in the geography of Zurich private banking since 2009 has been the rise of Asia, both as a source of wealth and as a location for booking and managing it. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLegacy and outlook
The Financial Services Act and the Financial Institutions Act have been in force for more than six years. Their legacy can already be described in three parts. The first is codification. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFamily offices, trusts and foundations in Zurich practice — overview and summary
The three preceding chapters of this part described the institutions through which Zurich manages other people’s money: the exchange, the fund industry and the private banks with their satellite of… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe family office in Zurich: concept and market
The term “family office” has no statutory definition in Swiss law. It describes an organisation that manages the wealth and affairs of one or more families, usually combining investment management… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe regulatory status of family offices
The Financial Institutions Act of 15 June 2018 (FinIA), in force since 1 January 2020, subjects portfolio managers and trustees to a licensing requirement with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingTrusts in Swiss law: recognition since 2007
The trust is an institution of English equity, and Swiss private law never adopted it. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingTrustees under the Financial Institutions Act
Before 2020 Swiss trustees were not subject to prudential supervision. Those who acted as financial intermediaries had to join a self-regulatory organisation for anti-money laundering purposes, but… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe taxation of trusts
Because the trust is unknown to Swiss private law, it is also unknown to Swiss tax law. Neither the Federal Act on Direct Federal Tax nor the Tax Harmonisation Act mentions it. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Swiss trust project and its abandonment
The recognition of foreign trusts left Switzerland in a curious position. Swiss banks, trustees and lawyers administered trusts every day, yet a Swiss family wishing to use a trust had to choose a… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Swiss family foundation
Where common law families use trusts, Swiss families have traditionally used foundations. The Swiss Civil Code of 1907 knows two main forms. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingCharitable foundations and foundation supervision in Zurich
Switzerland has one of the densest foundation sectors in the world. At the end of 2024 there were 13,724 charitable foundations, with total assets of approximately CHF 100 billion. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingComparison: the Liechtenstein foundation and the Jersey trust
For Swiss families and their advisers, the Liechtenstein foundation has long been the most natural alternative to the restricted Swiss family foundation. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingSuccession planning, forced heirship and the reforms of 2023 and 2025
Swiss succession law protects close relatives with compulsory portions. Until the end of 2022 the compulsory portion of descendants was three quarters of their statutory share and that of parents one… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingGovernance, disputes and arbitration
The legal instruments described so far give a structure to family wealth. They do not by themselves ensure that the family remains united around it. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingTransparency: automatic exchange of information and registers
The structures discussed in this chapter were long valued for their discretion. Over the past decade, transparency obligations have transformed them. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingPractical structures for international families moving to Zurich
International families move to Zurich for many reasons: the quality of life, the schools, the security, the political stability, the proximity to their business interests in Europe, and, for some,… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLegacy and outlook
The history described in this chapter shows a financial centre that has adapted to the needs of international families without adopting their legal institutions. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingTaxation in the canton of Zurich — overview and summary
Every financial centre is also a tax jurisdiction. The banks, insurers, asset managers, trust companies and family offices described in the preceding chapters of Part H choose where to book profits,… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThree levels of taxation and the federal framework of harmonisation
Switzerland taxes income and wealth at three levels. The Confederation levies the direct federal tax on the income of individuals and the profit of legal entities under the Federal Act on Direct… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingFrom the tax law of 1870 to the Steuergesetz of 1997
Direct taxation came late to Switzerland. England had introduced an income tax in 1799, but in Switzerland the general income tax spread slowly, against persistent federalist reservations. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe Steuerfuss: canton, city and communes
The tax multiplier is the instrument through which the canton and its communes adjust their revenue each year without touching the statutory tariff. Under § 2 para. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingCorporate taxation after the Tax Reform and AHV Financing
For three decades the Swiss answer to international tax competition had been a set of cantonal special regimes. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe OECD minimum tax
The second pillar of the OECD and G20 project on the taxation of the digital economy, agreed in October 2021, introduced a global minimum effective tax rate of 15 per cent for multinational groups… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingThe taxation of individuals
Individuals resident in the canton are subject to unlimited tax liability on their worldwide income and wealth, with the exception of foreign real estate and foreign permanent establishments, which… Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLump-sum taxation and its abolition in Zurich
Taxation according to expenditure, known in German as Besteuerung nach dem Aufwand or Pauschalbesteuerung and in French as forfait fiscal, is one of the oldest instruments of Swiss tax competition. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingInheritance and gift tax
Inheritance and gift taxes are cantonal in Switzerland. The Confederation has no power to levy them. Each canton decides whether to tax transfers on death and by gift, whom to tax and at what rates. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingRulings, administration and tax criminal law
Swiss tax authorities have long been willing to confirm in advance how a planned transaction will be treated. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingZurich, Zug and Schwyz compared
The financial centre of Zurich does not end at the cantonal border. Its labour market extends to Zug, to the Höfe district of Schwyz on the upper part of Lake Zurich and to Aargau. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingRelocation planning for individuals and companies
The Swiss federal structure makes intercantonal relocation a legitimate and frequent means of tax planning. The Federal Constitution prohibits intercantonal double taxation. Read more Zurich · Capital Markets, Asset Management and Private BankingLegacy and outlook
The Zurich tax system in 2026 is the product of a long history and of several recent decisions that have pointed in different directions. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Zurich Commercial Court and international dispute resolution — overview and summary
A financial centre is judged by the quality of the institutions that decide its disputes as much as by the size of its banks. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceA court made for merchants: the origins of the Zurich Handelsgericht
The Zurich Commercial Court was established in 1866. Its hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary in 2016 was marked by a Festschrift edited by Alexander Brunner and Peter Nobel under the title… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceComposition and working method: professional and commercial judges
The Commercial Court today consists of eight professional judges, members of the Obergericht, and seventy commercial judges who serve part-time alongside their principal occupation. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceJurisdiction: Article 6 CPC, the Zurich GOG and a single cantonal instance
Since 1 January 2011 civil procedure in Switzerland has been governed by the federal Civil Procedure Code (CPC, in German Zivilprozessordnung, ZPO), which replaced the twenty-six cantonal codes. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Civil Procedure Code of 2011 and its revision of 2025
Before 2011 a foreign party litigating in Switzerland had to master the procedural law of the canton concerned. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceEnglish in the courtroom: the Zurich International Commercial Court
The idea of an international commercial chamber in Zurich did not originate with the federal revision. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe wider court landscape of Zurich
The Obergericht of the Canton of Zurich is the canton’s highest court in civil and criminal matters. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceZurich as a seat of international arbitration
International arbitration in Switzerland is governed by Chapter 12 of the Federal Act on Private International Law (PILA), which entered into force together with the rest of the Act on 1 January… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceMediation and ombudsman schemes
Mediation has a secure but modest place in Swiss dispute resolution. The CPC allows the parties to replace conciliation by mediation and permits the court to recommend mediation at any stage of the… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceRecognition and enforcement of foreign judgments and awards
A judgment obtained abroad is of little value to a creditor unless it can be enforced where the debtor’s assets are. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceDebt enforcement and attachment: the SchKG as an instrument of recovery
The Federal Act on Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy (Bundesgesetz über Schuldbetreibung und Konkurs, SchKG, in English DEBA) of 1889 is one of the oldest federal codifications still in force and one… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceComparisons: London, Singapore, Frankfurt and Hamburg, Geneva
The Commercial Court of England and Wales is the model against which every international commercial court measures itself. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceLegacy and outlook
The history of commercial adjudication in Zurich shows a remarkable continuity. The court created in 1866 for the merchants of the canton has survived the unification of substantive law in 1883, the… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceProsecution of economic crime in Zurich — overview and summary
On the Güterstrasse, a few minutes on foot from the tracks of Zurich main station, stands the building that houses the Oberstaatsanwaltschaft of the Canton of Zurich together with three specialised… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Swiss Criminal Procedure Code and the prosecution model
Until the end of 2010, criminal procedure in Switzerland was a cantonal matter. Each of the twenty-six cantons had its own code of criminal procedure, while a federal statute governed the proceedings… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe prosecution authorities of the Canton of Zurich
The Zurich public prosecution service is part of the cantonal administration and falls under the Directorate of Justice and Home Affairs. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceFederal jurisdiction
The prosecution of crime in Switzerland is in principle a cantonal task. The Confederation prosecutes only offences that the law expressly assigns to it, such as offences against the state,… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe principal offences
Swiss economic criminal law has no single offence of “economic crime”. It relies on the general property offences of the Criminal Code, supplemented by special provisions in financial market… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceCorporate criminal liability
For most of the twentieth century, Swiss criminal law followed the maxim societas delinquere non potest: only natural persons could commit crimes. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceEnding proceedings without a full trial
The great majority of criminal cases in Switzerland end with a summary penalty order (Strafbefehl), a written conviction issued by the prosecutor without a trial. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceSeizure, confiscation and compensatory claims
For the victims of economic crime, the question whether assets can be secured is often more important than the question whether the offender will be convicted. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe rights of the defence
Every person accused of an economic offence in Zurich has the right to remain silent, the right to counsel from the first police interview and the right to participate in the taking of evidence. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe cross-border dimension
Almost every significant economic crime case in Zurich has a foreign element. The predicate offence may have been committed abroad, the victims may live in another country, the offender may have left… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceLegacy and outlook
The prosecution of economic crime in Zurich today rests on several layers that were deposited at different times. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceAnti-money-laundering compliance — overview and summary
Anti-money-laundering law is the part of Swiss financial regulation that touches almost every client relationship in Zurich. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe architecture of the Swiss regime
The central statute is the Federal Act of 10 October 1997 on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, known in German as the Geldwäschereigesetz (GwG) and in English as the Anti-Money… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe persons subject to the Act
Article 2 AMLA distinguishes two groups of financial intermediaries. The first group, listed in paragraph 2, consists of institutions that are financial intermediaries by virtue of their licence:… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe due diligence duties
The first duty of every financial intermediary is to verify the identity of the contracting party on the basis of a document with evidential value when establishing a business relationship (Article 3… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceReporting suspicions
The reporting duty is the point at which private compliance becomes part of criminal prosecution. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceTax offences as predicate offences
For most of its history Swiss money-laundering law drew a sharp distinction between the proceeds of crime and undeclared money. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe reform of 2025 and 2026: transparency and advisers
The reform that enters into force on 1 October 2026 answers two weaknesses that the FATF and other observers had identified for years. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceSwitzerland and the FATF
Switzerland has been a member of the FATF since its foundation in 1989 and has adapted its legislation to the cycles of FATF evaluation ever since. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceSupervisory practice and enforcement
FINMA supervises the anti-money-laundering compliance of the institutions under its direct supervision through audits, on-site reviews, supervisory reviews and, where it finds serious breaches,… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceMoney-laundering typologies in Zurich
The typologies that occupy compliance departments in Zurich follow from the structure of the financial centre. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe practitioner’s perspective
In a Zurich bank or asset manager, anti-money-laundering compliance is organised according to the model of the three lines of defence. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceLegacy and outlook
The Swiss anti-money-laundering regime of 2026 bears the marks of its history. The due diligence agreement of the banks, born after Chiasso in 1977, survives as the CDB 20. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceSanctions and export control — overview and summary
Sanctions law has become one of the busiest fields of practice in the Zurich financial centre within a few years. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceFrom neutrality to sanctions practice
Swiss neutrality and economic sanctions were long regarded as incompatible. The classical doctrine held that a permanently neutral state should abstain from economic measures directed against one… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Embargo Act and its ordinances
The Federal Act of 22 March 2002 on the Implementation of International Sanctions, known as the Embargo Act (Embargogesetz, EmbG, SR 946.231), is a short statute of eighteen articles. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceSECO and the institutional architecture
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, part of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research, administers the sanctions ordinances. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceNeutrality and the adoption of EU sanctions
Since the Federal Council is not obliged to follow the European Union, every EU package raises the question whether Switzerland should adopt it, adopt it in part or stay away. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Russia ordinance of 4 March 2022
The measures adopted on 28 February 2022 were first inserted into the old circumvention ordinance of 2014. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceOwnership, control and the reach of the freeze
The freeze in Article 15 extends to entities owned or controlled by listed persons, although the ordinance does not define ownership or control. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceFrozen assets and the confiscation debate
The amount of frozen Russian assets has become the most visible measure of Swiss sanctions policy, although it is an imperfect one. SECO publishes the figure at irregular intervals. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceEnforcement
Enforcement of the Embargo Act lies with SECO under the procedure of the Administrative Criminal Law Act. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceExtraterritorial sanctions: the United States and the European Union
Swiss law recognises only Swiss sanctions. SECO states that third-country sanctions have in principle no direct effect in Switzerland and that Swiss law offers no protection against them. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceExport control: the Goods Control Act and dual-use goods
Export control is the older sibling of sanctions law. While sanctions target countries, persons and sectors for political reasons, export control restricts the transfer of goods and technology that… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceWar material: re-export, financing and neutrality
War material in the narrow sense is governed by the Federal Act of 13 December 1996 on War Material (War Material Act, KMG, SR 514.51). Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceFinancial services, payment screening and trade finance
For banks and payment service providers, sanctions compliance is above all a data problem. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe practitioner’s perspective
Sanctions work in Zurich falls into four broad areas: compliance programmes, licensing and interpretation requests to SECO, criminal and administrative defence, and the tracing and management of… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceMutual legal assistance, asset recovery and tax information exchange — overview and summary
A financial centre that holds a large share of the world’s cross-border private wealth will sooner or later be asked where a particular part of that wealth came from. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe Mutual Assistance Act and its treaty framework
The Federal Act of 20 March 1981 on International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, cited in German as IRSG, in French as EIMP and in English as IMAC, is the general statute for every form of… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceProcedure: from Bern to the Zurich prosecutor and back
Requests that do not travel directly between prosecutors reach the Federal Office of Justice, which acts as the central authority. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceAdministrative assistance in tax matters
Until 2009 Switzerland granted administrative assistance in tax matters only to a small number of treaty partners and, in most cases, only in cases of tax fraud. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe automatic exchange of financial account information
The automatic exchange of information is described in detail in Part G, which traces its origins in FATCA and in the Common Reporting Standard of the OECD. A brief account suffices here. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceAsset recovery: the assets of foreign politically exposed persons
Switzerland’s policy on the assets of fallen rulers is described historically in Part F, from the freezing of the Marcos accounts in 1986 to the return of the Abacha funds. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and CompliancePrivate asset recovery from Zurich
Victims of fraud, liquidators and judgment creditors who suspect assets in Zurich face a legal system that has no equivalent of the English Norwich Pharmacal order, the Bankers Trust order or… Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceBlocking statutes and direct cooperation with foreign authorities
The formal channels described so far exist because Swiss law forbids the informal ones. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceThe practitioner’s perspective
For persons whose accounts in Zurich are the subject of a foreign request, the first step is to understand which channel is being used. Read more Zurich · Law, Courts, Enforcement and ComplianceLegacy and outlook
The history of cross-border cooperation from Zurich is one of gradual opening under external pressure. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyFintech licence, sandbox and the DLT Act — overview and summary
Few areas of Swiss financial law have changed as quickly as the rules that govern financial technology. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologySwitzerland's regulatory approach to fintech since 2016
The starting point of the modern Swiss fintech regime was a decision of the Federal Council on 2 November 2016. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe fintech licence under Article 1b of the Banking Act
The third element of the Federal Council's programme, the fintech licence, was adopted by Parliament on 15 June 2018 as part of the legislative package that also produced the Financial Services Act… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyFINMA's token taxonomy: initial coin offerings and stablecoins
The years 2017 and 2018 brought a wave of initial coin offerings to Switzerland. Project teams from around the world established foundations in Zug and companies in Zurich, raised funds by issuing… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe DLT Act of 25 September 2020
The Federal Council's report of December 2018 led directly to a legislative project. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyCrypto banks, custody, staking and crypto funds
On 26 August 2019 FINMA granted banking and securities dealer licences to two newly founded institutions specialising in crypto-assets and Digital Assets: SEBA Crypto AG in Zug and Sygnum Bank AG in… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe reform of 2025 and 2026: payment instrument institutions and crypto institutions
By 2025 the limits of the Swiss approach had become visible. The European Union had adopted a comprehensive regime for crypto-assets, the United States had enacted federal legislation on payment… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologySwitzerland and the European MiCA regime
The European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) entered into force in June 2023. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe taxation of crypto-assets and Digital Assets
Tax law was the second field in which Swiss authorities had to find answers for crypto-assets without specific legislation. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyAutomatic exchange of information on crypto-assets
The tax transparency regime that Switzerland accepted after the end of banking secrecy, described in Part G, rested on the Common Reporting Standard of the OECD. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe practitioner's perspective
The body of law described in this chapter has generated a distinct kind of legal work in Zurich. At its centre stands the token classification opinion. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyLegacy and outlook
The Swiss fintech regime of the decade from 2016 to 2026 leaves a mixed but largely positive legacy. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyCrypto Valley, tokenisation and digital market infrastructure — overview and summary
Few developments in the recent history of Swiss finance began as far from the banking houses of the Bahnhofstrasse as the one described in this chapter. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe origins of Crypto Valley in Zug
The canton of Zug had prepared the ground for Crypto Valley long before anyone spoke of blockchains. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe ICO boom of 2017–2018 and its disputes
An initial coin offering, or ICO, allowed a project team to collect funds from the public by issuing tokens on an existing blockchain, usually Ethereum, in exchange for bitcoin or ether. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyFoundations as vehicles and the supervisory authority
The Swiss foundation under Articles 80 to 89a of the Civil Code is an independent pool of assets dedicated to a particular purpose. It has no members and no owners. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe ecosystem today: Zug, Zurich and Lugano
The most frequently cited source on the size of Crypto Valley is the annual report of the Zug investor CV VC, which for several years has counted the blockchain firms of Switzerland and Liechtenstein… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyCrypto banks, bank offerings and brokers
The step from start-up to bank was taken in August 2019. On 26 August of that year FINMA granted banking and securities dealer licences to two newly founded institutions, SEBA Crypto AG in Zug and… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyTokenisation and digital market infrastructure
The most ambitious project of the Swiss financial centre in this field was built by SIX, the operator of the Swiss stock exchange and of the central securities depository SIX SIS, which is described… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyStablecoins and the Swiss franc
Stablecoins are tokens whose value is linked to a currency or another asset and which are intended to serve as a means of payment or settlement on a blockchain. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyCrypto compliance: money laundering, the travel rule and sanctions
The general framework of Swiss anti-money laundering law, described in chapter I.III, applies to crypto-assets without major adaptation. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyTracing, seizure and insolvency
The transparency of public blockchains makes crypto-assets easier to trace than many traditional assets, provided that the investigators can link addresses to persons. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe practitioner’s perspective
The questions that clients bring to lawyers in Zurich and Zug about token projects have changed since 2017, although their structure has remained stable. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyLegacy and outlook
Crypto Valley has left a durable mark on the Swiss financial centre. It brought a new industry to a small canton, forced the regulators to develop a vocabulary for a new asset class and led to the… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyArtificial intelligence, big tech and the talent base — overview and summary
A financial centre has always depended on the people who work in it. The merchant bankers of the nineteenth century, the securities traders of the post-war decades and the wealth managers who turned… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe academic foundation: ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich
Any account of artificial intelligence in Zurich begins at ETH Zurich, the federal institute of technology founded in 1855, whose computer science department has supplied the city’s technology… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyBig tech in Zurich
The presence of international technology companies in Zurich has a long prehistory. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyStart-ups and venture capital
The concentration of research and corporate laboratories has produced a lively start-up scene, which is financed by a venture capital market that remains small by international standards. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe talent base
The AI laboratories and the financial institutions of Zurich draw on the same international labour market. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyArtificial intelligence in banking, insurance and compliance
The most reliable picture of AI use in the Swiss financial sector comes from a survey conducted by FINMA between late November 2024 and mid-January 2025 among around 400 supervised institutions,… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyFINMA’s supervisory expectations
FINMA has not issued a circular on artificial intelligence. It has chosen to formulate its expectations within the existing framework of governance and risk management, in line with its… Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyThe Swiss approach to AI regulation
For several years Switzerland watched the development of the EU AI Act without committing itself to a horizontal statute of its own. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyData protection, outsourcing and cloud computing
The revised Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) entered into force on 1 September 2023. It is technology-neutral and therefore applies directly to AI-supported processing of personal data. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyOperational resilience and cyber risk
AI systems are part of the information and communication technology of an institution, and their failure or manipulation is an operational risk. Read more Zurich · Crypto-Assets and Digital Assets, Fintech and TechnologyLegal technology and the practice of law
The legal profession in Zurich, which serves the financial centre as advisers, litigators and compliance specialists, has adopted AI tools with growing speed. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubZurich and Germany: a history of capital and conflict — overview and summary
No foreign country has shaped the Zurich financial centre as persistently as Germany. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubCapital, people and ideas in the nineteenth century
The economic relationship between Zurich and the German states is older than either the Swiss federal state or the German Empire. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubCreditor and refuge: the interwar years
The First World War interrupted the free movement of capital between the two countries without breaking the economic bond. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubWar, the Washington Agreement and the settlement with Bonn
The Second World War bound the Swiss economy to Germany more closely than ever before, although Switzerland remained dependent on the Allies for overseas supplies. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe post-war partnership
The German economic recovery after the currency reform of 1948 made the Federal Republic once again Switzerland’s dominant trading partner within a few years. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubGerman tax flight, 1970s to 2000s
The flight of German money to Switzerland after 1950 had different motives from the flight of the interwar period. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe years of confrontation, 2008 to 2013
The conflict began outside Switzerland. On 14 February 2008 German prosecutors searched the home and office of Klaus Zumwinkel, the chief executive of Deutsche Post AG, on suspicion that he had… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe withholding tax agreement of 2011
The Swiss government sought a way out of the conflict that would preserve banking secrecy while giving the German state its revenue. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubVoluntary disclosure under German law
The German instrument for regularising undeclared income is the voluntary disclosure (Selbstanzeige) under § 371 AO. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubAutomatic exchange and the new normal
A multilateral standard finally ended the conflict over undeclared German money. On 27 May 2015 Switzerland and the European Union signed an agreement on the automatic exchange of financial account… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe relationship today
Measured by trade, investment and migration, the relationship between Switzerland and Germany is closer today than at any time since 1914. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLegacy: from conflict to compliance
The history of Zurich and Germany is a history of dependence in both directions. For almost two centuries, German capital, German people and German ideas have contributed to the growth of the Zurich… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubGerman entrepreneurs, families and relocation — overview and summary
Every working day, trains from Stuttgart, Munich and Frankfurt arrive at Zurich main station carrying engineers, bankers, physicians and consultants who hold German passports. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubWhy German entrepreneurs and families move to Zurich
The German presence in the canton of Zurich is large by any measure. According to the cantonal migration office, the permanent foreign resident population of the canton amounted to about 455,800… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe treaty framework: the convention of 1971 and its protocols
The central instrument of the tax relationship is the Agreement between the Swiss Confederation and the Federal Republic of Germany for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubResidence under the convention and Article 4 paragraph 3
The convention follows the OECD Model in defining a resident of a contracting state as a person who is subject to unlimited tax liability under the law of that state. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubFive years of extended unlimited tax liability: Article 4 paragraph 4
The second special rule of the convention is directed at the move itself. Under Article 4 paragraph 4, Germany may tax an individual resident in Switzerland who does not hold Swiss nationality and… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubEmployment income and cross-border commuters
Employment income is taxable under Article 15 of the convention in the state where the employment is exercised. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubDividends, interest, capital gains and withholding taxes
The treatment of dividends determines the tax position of every German entrepreneur who holds shares in a German company after moving to Zurich. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe extended limited tax liability under § 2 AStG
The convention allows Germany to tax, but German domestic law must still impose the tax. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubExit taxation under § 6 AStG
The exit tax of § 6 AStG is the most important single obstacle to the relocation of German entrepreneurs. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubCompanies: controlled foreign company rules and the relocation of companies
Many German entrepreneurs who move to Zurich also establish companies there, whether as holding companies for their German interests, as operating companies for new ventures or as vehicles for the… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubInheritance and gift tax
Unlike most of its neighbours, Switzerland has maintained a double taxation convention with Germany in the field of inheritance tax. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe Swiss side: taxation, residence and social security
A German who takes up residence in the canton of Zurich becomes subject to unlimited tax liability for the direct federal tax and for the cantonal and communal taxes from the day of his arrival. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubGerman pensions and German real estate
German pensions follow the move to Zurich in different ways depending on their nature. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubCompliance and criminal risk
The most serious risk in the relocation of German taxpayers to Switzerland is the fictitious move. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubA practitioner’s checklist
The legal questions described in this chapter must be addressed in a sequence that reflects their interaction. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLegacy and outlook
The relocation of German entrepreneurs and families to Zurich is part of a long history. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubAustria, Liechtenstein and the DACH market — overview and summary
Seen from Zurich, the German-speaking economic area does not end at the Rhine between Basel and Lake Constance. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe DACH economic area: trade, capital and language
No treaty defines the DACH area, which has no legal existence of its own. The term denotes a practical category that describes the overlap of three economies bound together by geography, language and… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubAustria and the Zurich banking relationship
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, Austria was the only country in the German-speaking area that could compete with Switzerland in the business of discretion. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubAustrian private clients, the Privatstiftung and the Vienna–Zurich axis
Austria answered the question of how to hold family wealth across generations with an instrument of its own. The Privatstiftungsgesetz (PSG), published as BGBl. Nr. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLiechtenstein and Switzerland: customs, currency and a common economic area
Until the end of the First World War, Liechtenstein belonged economically to Austria. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLiechtenstein in the European Economic Area
The decisive turn in Liechtenstein’s modern economic history came with the European Economic Area. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLiechtenstein’s banks and their Zurich links
Liechtenstein’s banking sector is small in the number of institutions and large in the volume of assets it manages. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubFoundations, trusts and the data affair of 2008
The instrument that made Liechtenstein famous among wealthy families in the German-speaking area is its law of foundations and trusts. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLiechtenstein’s transformation
The political response to the affair came on 12 March 2009, when the government of Liechtenstein published a declaration committing the principality to implement the global standards of transparency… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubZurich as a hub for DACH clients
Zurich’s role in the DACH market rests on a concentration of service providers that neither Vaduz nor the Austrian cities can match. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubCommuters, networks and the Lake Constance region
The DACH market is also a labour market. Switzerland employs a large number of cross-border commuters, persons who live in a neighbouring country and return there at least once a week. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLegacy and outlook
The relationships described in this chapter have left a distinct imprint on the Zurich financial centre. The first legacy is structural. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubGerman, Swiss German and English as infrastructure — overview and summary
Financial centres are usually described through their institutions, their laws and their markets. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubLanguage as economic infrastructure
Economists came to language comparatively late. One of the first to treat it as an economic object was Jacob Marschak, whose article “Economics of Language” of 1965 is regarded as the starting point… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubThe linguistic situation of Zurich
Switzerland recognises four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh, of which the first three are official languages of the Confederation for all purposes and Romansh for dealings… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubZurich as a centre of German-language printing and publishing
Zurich’s place in the German-speaking world was shaped early by the printing press. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubSwiss Standard German and the language of the law
German is a pluricentric language with several national standard varieties. The standard German written in Switzerland differs from that of Germany and Austria in vocabulary, spelling, grammar and… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubMultilingual federal law and the practice of legal translation
Swiss federal law exists in three equally binding language versions. Article 14 of the Federal Act on the Compilations of Federal Legislation and the Federal Gazette, the Publications Act… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubSwiss and German legal terminology in cross-border practice
For German entrepreneurs, families and advisers who establish structures in Zurich, the most important terminological differences lie in company law. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubEnglish as the language of finance
English entered the Zurich financial centre through the international capital markets of the 1960s and 1970s, when Swiss banks became major participants in the Eurobond market and in international… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubDialect as trust capital and the other national languages
Private banking is a business of trust, and trust is built in conversation. The Zurich private banks and the wealth management divisions of the large banks serve an international clientele in… Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubZurich compared: language regimes of competing centres
The comparison with Geneva, the subject of the companion volume, shows two different models of linguistic infrastructure within the same country. Read more Zurich · The German-Speaking HubMachine translation, artificial intelligence and the limits of legal language
Since the late 2010s, neural machine translation has transformed the practice of translation. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035International competition: London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Geneva — overview and summary
Financial centres compete for the same scarce goods: the trust of wealthy families, the mandates of institutional investors, the listings of growing companies, the head offices of banks and insurers,… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Measuring financial centres
The most widely quoted measure of financial centres is the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), which the London think tank Z/Yen Partners has published twice a year since 2007, now in… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035London
London remains the only financial centre in Europe that competes with New York across the whole range of wholesale finance. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Singapore
Singapore is the competitor that most resembles Zurich in its strengths. Like Switzerland, the city-state offers political stability, a strong currency, low taxes, an efficient administration, a… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s recovery is the most surprising development in the competitive field. Between 2019 and 2022 the city lived through mass protests, the National Security Law of June 2020, some of the… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Dubai and Abu Dhabi
The United Arab Emirates have become the fastest-growing competitor for internationally mobile wealth. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Geneva
Geneva is Zurich’s closest competitor and its most natural partner. The companion volume to this book describes Geneva as an international financial centre in its own right, with a history that runs… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Other European competitors
Within Europe, Zurich competes with several centres that are smaller than London but enjoy an advantage that Switzerland lacks: full access to the internal market of the European Union. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Zurich’s comparative strengths and weaknesses
Zurich’s first strength is legal certainty. Swiss law is codified, published in three official languages and applied by courts whose independence is not seriously questioned. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035The view of international clients
For clients from Asia, the choice between Zurich, Singapore and Hong Kong is rarely exclusive. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Scenarios for 2035 — overview and summary
A book that begins with a Roman customs post on the Limmat and ends in September 2026 owes its readers a view of what comes next. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Method: scenarios, drivers and uncertainties
Scenario planning emerged from the strategic thinking of the Cold War. Herman Kahn, first at the RAND Corporation and later at the Hudson Institute, used alternative stories of the future to think… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 1: the one-big-bank financial centre
No question will shape the Zurich financial centre of 2035 more than the future of UBS. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 2: relations with the European Union
The second driver concerns Switzerland’s relationship with its largest trading partner. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 3: crypto-assets and Digital Assets and tokenised markets
Part J has described how Switzerland built one of the most complete legal frameworks for crypto-assets and Digital Assets in the world. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 4: demography, pensions and the transfer of wealth
Demographic change is the most predictable of all the drivers. The Federal Statistical Office expects the resident population of Switzerland to reach about 9.5 million in the early 2030s and to… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 5: geopolitics, sanctions and neutrality
The fifth driver concerns Switzerland’s position in a world that has become more dangerous and more divided. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 6: artificial intelligence and talent
Artificial intelligence will change the production function of the financial centre more deeply than any technology since the computer. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Driver 7: taxation
The seventh driver is taxation, a field in which the Swiss federal order gives the cantons wide autonomy and the voters the last word. Chapter H.V described the position of Zurich within this system. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Four scenarios for 2035
The seven drivers contain predetermined elements and critical uncertainties. Among the predetermined elements are the ageing of the population and the transfer of wealth, the existence of a modern… Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035Implications
For banks, insurers, asset managers and financial market infrastructures in Zurich, the scenarios suggest several robust choices. Capital strength has become a competitive factor. Read more Zurich · Zurich 2035A closing reflection: the long arc of the Zurich financial centre
A book that has followed the Zurich financial centre over two thousand years may end with a question that no scenario can answer: what, in this long history, has made the difference between the… Read more