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Liechtenstein’s banks and their Zurich links

A small banking sector with a large footprint

Liechtenstein’s banking sector is small in the number of institutions and large in the volume of assets it manages. According to the Financial Market Authority, eleven banks were licensed in the principality in 2025. Their consolidated client assets rose by 6.8 percent in 2025 to 538.0 billion francs, while their operating result increased by 19.4 percent to 857.7 million francs. Asset management companies supervised by the FMA managed a further 57.7 billion francs for some 11,723 client relationships.1 The difference between the consolidated figures and the assets booked in Liechtenstein itself is significant. In the FMA’s figures for 2024, the domestic portion amounted to 217.3 billion francs of a consolidated total of 503.7 billion.2 More than half of the assets managed by Liechtenstein banking groups are therefore booked abroad, a substantial part of them in Switzerland.

The three largest institutions, LGT, the Liechtensteinische Landesbank and VP Bank, each have a distinct history and a distinct relationship with Zurich. Their development illustrates how the Liechtenstein financial centre grew out of the customs treaty, how it internationalised after the Second World War and how it has shifted from offshore to onshore business since 2009.

LGT: the bank of the Princely House

The oldest roots of LGT go back to the Bank in Liechtenstein, founded in 1920 in the aftermath of the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1930 the Princely House of Liechtenstein acquired more than ninety percent of the shares, establishing a control that has lasted ever since. When the group was renamed Liechtenstein Global Trust in 1996, the parent bank became LGT Bank in Liechtenstein AG. Its chairman is Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein, and at the end of 2025 the group managed some 386 billion francs with around 6,000 employees in more than forty locations.3

LGT’s Swiss operations are among the most important links between Vaduz and Zurich. According to the bank’s own account, the foundations were laid in 1983 with the establishment of Bilfinanz und Verwaltung in Zurich. LGT entered the Swiss market on a larger scale in 2003 through the acquisition of STG Schweizerische Treuhandgesellschaft and expanded to five locations in 2004. It then acquired Dresdner Bank (Schweiz) in 2009 and a selected private banking portfolio of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) in 2014. LGT Bank (Schweiz) now operates in Zurich, Basel, Geneva, Bern, Lugano and St. Gallen with more than 800 private banking and asset management specialists.4 The acquisition of Dresdner Bank (Schweiz) from Commerzbank, announced on 27 July 2009 and completed on 1 December 2009, added 9.4 billion francs of client assets on the basis of end-2008 figures and was integrated into LGT Bank (Schweiz) in February 2010.5

The Dresdner transaction is emblematic of the DACH market. A German bank, forced by the financial crisis into the arms of Commerzbank and under pressure to reduce its non-core activities, sold its Swiss private banking arm, which had served German clients from Zurich for decades. The buyer was a Liechtenstein bank owned by a princely family with deep roots in Austria. The transaction took place in the same year in which Liechtenstein committed itself to the OECD standard on exchange of information and in which the German debate on Swiss banking secrecy reached its height. It anticipated the consolidation of the cross-border private banking industry that followed in the next decade.

The Liechtensteinische Landesbank

The Liechtensteinische Landesbank is the oldest bank in the principality. It was established on 5 December 1861 as the Zins- und Credit-Landes-Anstalt, shortly before the constitution of 1862. It gained institutional independence with a state guarantee in 1923, took its present name in 1955 and developed into a universal bank serving international clients after the Second World War. It was partially privatised and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange in 1993, although the state remains its majority shareholder.6 The bank’s own history adds that the customs treaty opened the Swiss market to it.7 The listing on the Zurich exchange, shared by VP Bank, illustrates the integration of Liechtenstein banks into the Swiss capital market.

The LLB’s Swiss presence rests on the acquisition of Bank Linth in 2007, a regional bank based in Uznach in the canton of St. Gallen, which was later renamed LLB (Schweiz). The strategy programmes of the 2010s concentrated the bank on onshore markets, from which base it has since expanded into Austria and, from 2024, into Germany with offices in Munich, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. In September 2025 it announced its withdrawal from the Middle East.8 The LLB’s current configuration captures the logic of the DACH market with unusual clarity: a Liechtenstein parent with EEA market access, a Swiss subsidiary with Swiss clients, an Austrian subsidiary acquired partly from the Zürcher Kantonalbank and German offices serving German clients locally.

VP Bank

The third major institution, VP Bank, was founded by the trustee Guido Feger, who received a banking concession on 4 April 1956 and established the Verwaltungs- und Privat-Bank as an Anstalt with an initial capital of two million francs. The bank became a joint-stock company in 1962. Having become the first Liechtenstein bank to join the Swiss bank clearing system in 1971, it received a full banking concession in 1975. Its shares were traded on the secondary market of the Zurich exchange from 1983 and in the main segments of the Zurich, Basel, Geneva and St. Gallen exchanges from 1987. The bank founded a subsidiary in Luxembourg in 1988, opened an asset management company in Singapore in 2007 and merged with Centrum Bank in 2015. It took its present name, VP Bank AG, in 2014.9

VP Bank’s origin in a trust company is significant. Feger was a trustee before he was a banker. His bank grew out of the need of his clients, many of them foreign holders of Liechtenstein companies and foundations, for banking services close to their structures. The connection between the fiduciary business and banking has characterised the Liechtenstein financial centre since the 1920s. It also defined its relationship with Zurich, where banks, lawyers and trustees used Liechtenstein entities in their structures while keeping the assets in Swiss accounts. VP Bank’s Swiss subsidiary in Zurich continues this relationship in a form adapted to the regulatory environment of the present.10

The Zurich connection in practice

The Liechtenstein banks’ Zurich subsidiaries are Swiss banks in every legal sense. They hold a FINMA licence, they are subject to Swiss banking law and Swiss anti-money laundering rules and they participate in the Swiss deposit insurance scheme. Their function within the groups is nevertheless specific. They give access to Swiss clients, who are generally more comfortable with a Swiss legal entity. They offer a Swiss booking centre for international clients who prefer Swiss jurisdiction to that of an EEA state. They also give the groups a presence in Zurich’s labour market for portfolio managers, analysts and relationship managers, which is deeper than Liechtenstein’s own. Conversely, Swiss banks without an EEA presence can use cooperation with Liechtenstein institutions or insurance undertakings to offer products that require EU market access, such as insurance wrappers or UCITS funds distributed across the EEA.

The flow of personnel between Vaduz and Zurich reinforces these links. Many Liechtenstein bankers trained at Swiss universities, above all St. Gallen and Zurich, and began their careers at Zurich banks, while the Liechtenstein banks recruit relationship managers in Zurich who bring their clients with them. The boards of the Liechtenstein banks include Swiss members as a matter of course. This personal integration is difficult to quantify, yet it forms a large part of what practitioners mean when they describe Zurich and Vaduz as a single market for private wealth with two regulatory regimes.

Notes

  1. lie:zeit online, “Zahlen zum Finanzplatz präsentiert”, May 2026, https://www.lie-zeit.li/2026/05/zahlen-zum-finanzplatz-praesentiert/, reporting the figures presented by the FMA for the year 2025. According to the same report, the financial sector accounts for about 19 percent of employment in Liechtenstein and generates more than half of the revenue from income and profit taxes. ↩
  2. FMA, Finanzplatz Liechtenstein, edition 2025, https://www.fma-li.li/fma-li/documents/publikationen/finanzplatz-liechtenstein/fma-broschuere-finanzplatz-liechtenstein-2025.pdf. ↩
  3. Wikipedia, “LGT Group”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGT_Group, consulted for orientation. The ownership by the Princely House, whose activities also include agriculture and forestry in Austria and the Princely Collections in Vienna, is described on LGT’s own website, “Our owner”, https://www.lgt.com/global-en/about-lgt/our-owner. ↩
  4. LGT, “Ihre Privatbank in der Schweiz”, https://www.lgt.com/ch-de/ueber-lgt/lgt-in-der-schweiz. ↩
  5. swissinfo.ch, “LGT Group schliesst Übernahme der Dresdner Bank (Schweiz) ab”, 1 December 2009, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/lgt-group-schliesst-uebernahme-der-dresdner-bank-schweiz-ab/7808516. ↩
  6. Wikipedia, “Liechtensteinische Landesbank”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtensteinische_Landesbank, which records the listing on the Swiss stock exchange in 1993, when 57.5 per cent was held by the state, and a current state holding of 56.3 per cent. ↩
  7. Liechtensteinische Landesbank, “Geschichte”, https://llb.li/de/die-llb/ueber-uns/unsere-werte/geschichte. ↩
  8. Liechtensteinische Landesbank, “Geschichte” (note above). ↩
  9. VP Bank, “History”, https://www.vpbank.com/en/about-us/brand-history/history. ↩
  10. Wikipedia, “VP Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP_Bank, which lists VP Bank (Switzerland) Ltd in Zurich among the group’s subsidiaries, established in 1988 as VPB Finanz AG. VP Bank itself was founded by Guido Feger on 6 April 1956. ↩

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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