The post-war companies

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The transformation began after the Second World War. The canton's tax policy, which Part B described, attracted holding and domiciliary companies from the 1950s. Many of them were subsidiaries of American and British groups that wished to hold their international participations or to manage their European business from a neutral and tax-efficient location. The companies sent managers from their headquarters, and those managers brought English into the offices of the canton. The Swiss employees who worked with them learned to use it in their work. The arrival of the commodity traders accelerated the change. Philipp Brothers, an American metals trader, established itself in Zug in the 1950s, and Marc Rich + Co followed in 1974.¹ Marc Rich was born in Belgium and grew up in the United States. His company was international from the start and its working language was English. The traders who worked for him came from many countries and shared no language except English. The same was true for the other trading houses that settled in the canton, and for the banks and service providers that worked for them. By the 1980s, English was the language of a significant part of the canton's economy, even though the number of English-speaking residents was still small.

Notes

University of Texas at Austin, Cultures Contexts, "Marc Rich and Switzerland: An Uneasy Relationship", 30 June 2013, sites.utexas.edu: in 1974 Marc Rich and associates founded Marc Rich + Co AG in Zug; Wikipedia (English), "Marc Rich": born in Antwerp in 1934, family emigrated in 1941 and settled in the United States. For the arrival of Philipp Brothers (arrival 1956, commercial register entry 20 March 1957; Zug in der Welt, "Der wichtigste Wirtschaftscluster im Kanton Zug") see Part D. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.

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The post-war companies

Notes

Setting up or expanding in Switzerland?