简体 繁體 日本語 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia Русский Українська English Deutsch Français Español Português Tiếng Việt Türkçe العربية עברית

The Effektenbörsenverein and the first exchange building

The founding year of the Zurich exchange

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. The Historisches Lexikon gives 1884, the year in which trading began under state authorisation.1 The English-language Wikipedia article on SIX Swiss Exchange and several practitioner texts give 1873, while the Swiss Finance Museum names 1855 for the association and 1877 as the year in which the Zurich exchange first appears in official price sheets.2 The Effektenbörsenverein Zürich itself dated its beginnings to 1877. Its official history, written by Hans Rudolf Schmid and Richard T. Meier, appeared for the centenary of the exchange and closes with a price list of 30 June 1977. The book contains a chapter headed “Zum Gründungsjahr der Zürcher Börse”, which shows that the founding year was already a matter for discussion when the exchange looked back on its first hundred years.3

The disagreement is instructive for the lawyer as well as for the historian. It reflects the fact that the Zurich exchange was built in layers. A private association of merchants came first (1855). Next came a separate association of securities dealers with its own rules and its own price list (1877). A dedicated building followed (1880), and finally a cantonal statute that turned trading into a licensed activity under public supervision (1883, in force for trading from 1884). Each layer added a different kind of authority: the social authority of the merchant community, the contractual authority of association rules, the physical authority of a place where prices were made and the legal authority of the state. Modern exchange regulation still distinguishes between these elements. The operator of a trading venue, its rulebook, its technical infrastructure and its public supervision remain separate legal objects, even though the modern forms are very different.

The Effektenbörsenverein Zürich

The Effektenbörsenverein Zürich was the association of the securities dealers, bankers and brokers who traded on the Zurich exchange. Under its rules, members were admitted to the trading floor, a committee settled matters of market practice and a price list was published. The centenary history places its founding immediately after the creation of the Kaufmännische Gesellschaft in 1873 and before its account of the construction of the first exchange building. In the later Swiss model the association remained the private operator of the market, while the canton issued licences and supervised trading. The Effektenbörsenverein existed in this role until the Swiss exchanges were merged in the 1990s. Its long life made it one of the most durable institutions of the Zurich financial centre.

The members of the association were at first mainly independent brokers and private bankers. The large banks were not yet dominant on the floor. The centenary history has a chapter entitled “Ein Streit um die Courtage bringt die Banken in die Börse”, which indicates that a dispute over brokerage fees in the early years of the state exchange led the banks to become members in their own right.4 This development set Zurich apart from Geneva, where independent agents de change remained the core of the exchange well into the twentieth century. The research of Kim Oosterlinck and Hugues Pirotte on the Geneva exchange in the interwar period describes the conflict between the independent Geneva brokers and the Swiss German banks over access to the market.5 The roots of that conflict lie in the different membership structures that took shape in the two cities before 1914.

The exchange building on the Bahnhofstrasse, 1877–1880

The Bahnhofstrasse, on which the exchange was built, was itself a product of the railway age and of the liberal city. It came into being after the city fortifications were demolished in 1864 and the ditch in front of the walls, the Fröschengraben, was filled in.6 Within two decades the new street became the address of Zurich’s financial institutions. The Historisches Lexikon lists among the great building projects of the period between 1860 and 1890 the Bahnhofstrasse itself (from 1864), the building of the Kreditanstalt on Paradeplatz (1873–1875) and the exchange together with the upper Bahnhofstrasse (1880–1890).7 The city grew rapidly at the same time: on the territory of the present municipality, the population of Zurich rose from 65,668 in 1870 to 103,862 in 1888.8

The exchange building at Bahnhofstrasse 3 was erected between 1877 and 1880 to designs by Albert Müller, a pupil of Gottfried Semper, and Caspar Conrad Ulrich. It was a Neo-Renaissance building with a rounded corner tower, counted among the most important Zurich buildings of its time. Its centre was a monumental trading hall of about 22 by 35 metres and 17 metres high.9 A hall of these dimensions was a statement of ambition. Besides showing that Zurich’s merchants and bankers expected their market to grow, it gave the exchange a public presence on the new representative street of the city, a short walk from the Kreditanstalt and from the railway station through which much of the capital for the railways had been raised. The building served as the exchange for fifty years, until trading moved in 1930 to a new building on the Bleicherweg.10

The later fate of the building also belongs to the history of the financial centre. After the exchange left, the hall was removed despite protests, while the architects Witmer and Senn converted the building into a bank building in 1932.11 It belongs today to the Baugarten foundation, the successor of the Hülfsgesellschaft of 1799 and of the Sparkasse der Stadt Zürich. After a comprehensive renovation it reopened in early 2025 with a department store and the Zurich offices of an American investment bank as tenants.12 The sequence of uses, from a trading hall to a bank to a building let to an international investment bank, summarises the transformation of the financial centre over a century and a half.

Notes

  1. HLS, Meyerhans, “Börsen”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13741.php. ↩
  2. “SIX Swiss Exchange”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIX_Swiss_Exchange. Swiss Finance Museum, “The history of trading”, https://www.finanzmuseum.ch/en/home/visit/guided-tours/history-of-trading.html. ↩
  3. Schmid and Meier, Die Geschichte der Zürcher Börse, table of contents, including the chapters “Zum Gründungsjahr der Zürcher Börse”, “Zehn Jahrzehnte Börsengeschehen” and “Die Zürcher Börse an der Schwelle zum zweiten Jahrhundert”, https://urn.ub.unibe.ch/urn:ch:slsp:zbz:991132393929705501:ihv:pdf. ↩
  4. Schmid and Meier, Die Geschichte der Zürcher Börse, table of contents, https://urn.ub.unibe.ch/urn:ch:slsp:zbz:991132393929705501:ihv:pdf. The chapter follows “Die Anfänge der Staatsbörse” and precedes “Das Eisenbahnfieber um 1890”. ↩
  5. Kim Oosterlinck and Hugues Pirotte, “Stock exchange competition: the case of Geneva during the interwar period”, Financial History Review 25 (2018), no. 2, pp. 183–201, abstract, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/financial-history-review/article/stock-exchange-competition-the-case-of-geneva-during-the-interwar-period/79BA46400B6B70947B0F9942754E51A3/core-reader. ↩
  6. “Bahnhofstrasse”, Wikipedia (English), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhofstrasse. ↩
  7. HLS, Behrens, “Zürich (Gemeinde)”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D171.php. ↩
  8. HLS, Nicola Behrens, Andreas Motschi and Max Schultheiss, “Zürich (Gemeinde)”, version of 25 January 2015, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/000171/, population table (figures for 1850–2000 according to the territory of 2000). ↩
  9. swiss-arc.ch, “In die Gegenwart geholt – über die Transformation der Alten Börse Zürich des Studios Märkli”, https://www.swiss-arc.ch/de/fachwissen-szene-artikel/architekturkritik/in-die-gegenwart-geholt-ueber-die-transformation-der-alten-boerse-zuerich-des-studios-maerkli/49390412. ↩
  10. WaltGalmarini, “Former Stock Exchange, Bahnhofstrasse 3, Zurich”, https://www.waltgalmarini.ch/en/portfolio/bahnhofstrasse_3/. The firm’s description calls the building Switzerland’s “first stock exchange”, which is correct only in the sense of the first purpose-built exchange building in Zurich, since Geneva had an organised exchange two decades earlier. ↩
  11. swiss-arc.ch, “In die Gegenwart geholt”, https://www.swiss-arc.ch/de/fachwissen-szene-artikel/architekturkritik/in-die-gegenwart-geholt-ueber-die-transformation-der-alten-boerse-zuerich-des-studios-maerkli/49390412. ↩
  12. Baugarten Zürich, “Über uns / About us”, https://www.baugarten-zuerich.ch/en/ueber-uns. The foundation’s account traces its origins to a relief society founded by fifteen Zurich families in 1799 and to the savings bank (Ersparniscassa) created in 1805. ↩

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.

Setting up or expanding in Switzerland?

Helvetica Register is an information portal. It explains what companies and entrepreneurs from around the world, and in particular from Greater China, Central Asia and the Caucasus, the rest of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, need to know about doing business in Switzerland: company law, commercial contracts, licences, banking, tax and residence.

Legal advice in Switzerland is provided by Ressos Legal, a Zurich law practice advising on all areas of Swiss law under the direction of Dr Alexander Ressos. Further information is available at www.ressos.ch.

Your project in Switzerland Speak to Dr Alexander Ressos Company formation, shareholder and commercial agreements, acquisitions, licences, bank accounts, tax and residence permits: I advise on Swiss law and coordinate with your lawyers in your home country, as well as local counsel in other jurisdictions as required.