The other Zurich banks of the era

The Bank in Winterthur (1862): a democratic foundation

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. It was founded by Johann Jakob Sulzer, the democratic city president of Winterthur, and by persons close to him.¹ The political colour of the founders mattered. Winterthur was the stronghold of the democratic opposition to Escher, whose newspaper, Der Landbote, attacked the Zurich liberal elite. A bank founded by the democratic mayor of Winterthur was therefore, among other things, a political counterpart to the Kreditanstalt of Zurich.

The business of the Winterthur bank reflected the economy of its city, an industrial centre with locomotive production and cotton manufacture at an important railway junction. Its large warehousing facilities allowed it to profit from the rise in cotton prices during the American Civil War, with the result that its share capital had doubled by the end of that conflict.² The same war that brought losses to the textile clients of the Kreditanstalt brought gains to a bank that held cotton in its warehouses. In 1912 the Bank in Winterthur merged with the Toggenburger Bank, a savings and mortgage bank founded in 1863 in Lichtensteig, to form the Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft. The merged bank had total assets of 202 million francs and shareholders’ equity of 46 million francs. Only after the First World War did it develop into a universal bank through acquisitions and branch openings, centralising its accounting in Zurich in 1918.³ The bank that absorbed Credit Suisse in 2023 thus has one of its roots in a democratic foundation of 1862 in Winterthur, a historical irony in view of the institution it absorbed.

The Eidgenössische Bank (1863): a Bernese radical bank that moved to Zurich

The Eidgenössische Bank was founded in Bern in 1863 as a commercial, securities and note-issuing bank. Its leading figure was Jakob Stämpfli, who resigned from the Federal Council in that year and became its first president. Two Paris banks, the Société Générale de Crédit Industriel et Commercial and the Société Anonyme des Dépôts et de Comptes Courants, participated in the foundation and guaranteed the first share issue.⁴ Stämpfli was one of Escher’s principal opponents in federal politics, a Bernese radical who had advocated state railways against the private model of 1852. The participation of French capital in his bank is an ironic counterpoint to the Kreditanstalt’s rhetoric of financial independence, since the rival of the Zurich bank accepted Paris banks as guarantors of its founding issue.

The Eidgenössische Bank abandoned the issue of banknotes in 1882 after financial difficulties and moved its head office from Bern to Zurich in 1892, in the course of a reorganisation, after which it developed into a respected big bank.⁵ Its move to Zurich illustrates the pull that the city exercised on the big banks at the end of the century. A bank founded in the federal capital by a federal councillor concluded within thirty years that its business was better conducted from Zurich. The Eidgenössische Bank did not survive the Second World War as an independent institution. Heavy losses from its German engagements led to the transfer of most of its business to the Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft in 1945, a story that belongs to Part F.

Leu & Co. and the older institutions

The oldest bank of Zurich, Leu & Co., whose history from its foundation as a state investment commission in 1755 is described in Part C, developed in the nineteenth century into the main mortgage institution of the canton. It became a joint-stock company in 1854, two years before the foundation of the Kreditanstalt. After difficulties, it was reorganised in 1871 and increasingly turned to asset management and commercial banking. In 1908 its entry into the Swiss banking cartel placed it among the six largest banks of the country.⁶ Leu thus followed the Kreditanstalt’s path towards commercial and securities business from a different starting point, as a mortgage bank that broadened its activities. Its eventual acquisition by Credit Suisse in 1990 closed a circle that had opened in the 1850s, when the two institutions had begun their parallel existence as joint-stock banks in the same city.

The Bank in Zürich of 1836, described in Part C, continued as a note-issuing bank until the creation of the National Bank. The Zürcher Kantonalbank of 1870 (Chapter D.V) grew rapidly into one of the strongest banks of the country. Together with the private bankers, the savings banks and the growing number of local and cooperative credit institutions, these banks formed a diverse landscape in which the Kreditanstalt occupied the summit. The Basel institutions, above all the Basler Bankverein founded in 1872 with a capital of 30 million francs, whose origins reached back to an association of six private bankers in the 1850s, provided the most serious competition.⁷ The rivalry between the Zurich and Basel big banks, which ended only with the merger of the Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft and the Schweizerischer Bankverein to form UBS in 1998, structured Swiss banking for a century.

Notes

1. UBS, “1862–1872”, history pages, https://www.ubs.com/global/de/our-firm/our-history/ubs-in-the-world/1862-1872.html. The page describes the Bank in Winterthur as the first predecessor bank of UBS, names Sulzer as its founder, gives its initial capital and records its issue of banknotes until 1907, together with the foundation of the Toggenburger Bank (1863) and the Basler Bankverein (1872). ↩
2. Wikipedia (English), “Union Bank of Switzerland”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Bank_of_Switzerland, on the Bank in Winterthur’s capital of 5 million francs, its location at a railway junction, its warehouses and the doubling of its capital during the Civil War; the article also gives the Toggenburger Bank’s foundation in Lichtensteig (1863) and the figures of the merged bank of 1912. ↩
3. HLS, “Union de Banques Suisses (UBS)”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/041819/, on the merger of 1912, the centralisation of accounting in Zurich in 1918, the development as a universal bank after the First World War and the transfer of the head office in 1945. ↩
4. Wikipedia (German), “Eidgenössische Bank”, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidgen%C3%B6ssische_Bank, on the foundation in Bern, Stämpfli’s role, the participation of the two Paris banks and the end of the bank in 1945. ↩
5. HLS, “Banque fédérale”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/042023/. The article records the abandonment of note issue in 1882, the transfer to Zurich in 1892, the losses from the concentration of investments in Germany in the 1930s and the transfer of most of its assets and liabilities to the Union de Banques Suisses in 1945. ↩
6. HLS, “Banque Leu”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/041661/, on the transformation into a joint-stock company in 1854, the reorganisation of 1871, the entry into the banking cartel in 1908 and the acquisition by Credit Suisse in 1990. ↩
7. UBS, “1862–1872” (cited above), on the foundation of the Basler Bankverein with a capital of 30 million francs and its origin in the short-lived Bank-Verein of six private bankers in the 1850s. The Basler Bankverein became the Schweizerischer Bankverein in 1898 according to HLS, Cassis, “Banken” (cited above). ↩

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.