Swiss Finance: Capital Markets, Banking, and the Swiss Value Chain

Preface

The origins of this book are in a 1982 to 1983 training guide that Henri Meier wrote for Swiss investment bankers and his staff, while he was head of Investment Banking at Handelsbank NW in Zurich, Switzerland. At that time, there was scarcely anything written on the subject, so his publication filled a gaping hole in the literature and, in the process, helped to reveal major sources of Switzerland's financial success.1 This early guide was expanded into a book-length manuscript, published, and refreshed periodically. During the 1980s, Swiss investment banking was purely a customer-service business, and Switzerland's financial function was mainly to act as a financial turntable, taking in foreign private deposits and investing them in high-quality investments abroad (i.e., outside Switzerland)—often in the same countries from which the savings originated.

In 1995, Henri Meier invited John Marthinsen, Professor of Economics and International Business at Babson College, to co-author the manuscript. John Marthinsen had extensive knowledge of the Swiss capital and money markets from his academic work, which focused on international banking and finance, and more than a decade of consulting work he had done for HandelsBank NW (Zurich) and Roche Holding (Basel). During the 1990s, European financial markets were experiencing revolutionary changes, and Switzerland's financial institutions and leaders were at the tip of the rebellion. As a result, the 1996 edition was well received, ...