Une chaîne d’expertises unique au monde

A global and competitive financial center

Created in 1991 by the 80 banks that were members of the Geneva stock exchange, the Geneva Financial Center (GFC) is the umbrella association of the financial sector.

Une chaîne d’expertises unique au monde
Generating 38,000 jobs and contributing 12.9% of Geneva's GDP, the financial sector is based on three pillars: private and institutional asset management, commodity trade finance, and commercial and retail banking. With the presence of activities such as shipping and surveillance, Geneva benefits from a center of competence and a cluster that is unique in the world. The Geneva Financial Center Foundation's main mission is to promote this value chain and to work towards the development of optimal framework conditions for all partners in the financial center.
A strong financial center benefits the entire economy and therefore all citizens.

Geneva Financial Center

The Geneva Financial Center focuses its activities on three main strategic priorities:

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strategic priorities

Geneva Financial Center

The Board represents all financial center players

The 13 members of the Board of the Financial Center represent the broad range of companies that operate in the Lake Geneva financial sector, including private bankers, large banks, commercial and wealth management banks, foreign-owned banks, cantonal banks, independent financial advisors, accounting firms, lawyers and commodity traders.

The Board defines the strategic priorities of the Foundation. It does so by listening attentively to the needs of all financial sector partners. This approach allows the GFC to target its activities to serve their interests and those of the Geneva financial center.

The Permanent Secretariat of the Foundation is responsible for managing day-to-day operations. Its Director is appointed by the Board.

Management, training and general administration:

  • Edouard Cuendet, Managing Director
  • Dominique Bong, Assistant

Communications & Promotion

  • Chantal Bourquin, Head of Communications, Executive Officer

Promotion & Training

  • Nancy Détry, Project Manager

Geneva Financial Center

500 years of banking excellence at your service

  • Geneva, city of trade

Situated at the crossroads of major trade routes from the Mediterranean to Flanders and from Italy to France, Geneva became an important center of trade many centuries ago.
 
In 1387, Bishop Adhémar Fabri granted the people of Geneva "franchises" that confirmed their ancient freedoms and awarded some new ones. One of these was the privilege to lend money with interest. No other Christian nation enjoyed this right, since the Church vehemently opposed money-lending at that time.

  • Geneva bankers, builders of Europe

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Geneva was one of the main centers of European trade. Transfers of funds, payment orders, loans and foreign exchange transactions saw traders become bankers.

By the seventeenth century, Geneva had developed global trading networks. Geneva’s bankers underwrote the Dutch East India Company, the Royal Bank of England, the Manufacture Royal des Glaces (Saint-Gobain, the first industrial firm in Europe) and many other enterprises.

Geneva’s bankers advised ministers and kings and occasionally even became ministers themselves. Albert Gallatin became Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and negotiated the purchase of Louisiana; Georges Prévost was Governor General of Canada; Pierre Isaac Tellusson was Director of the Bank of England, and Jacques Necker was Finance Minister to Louis XVI of France.

During the nineteenth century, Geneva’s bankers contributed to the industrial and commercial development of Switzerland and Europe by helping to fund new railways and issuing government bonds.

Switzerland's first stock exchange opened in Geneva in 1857, a quarter of a century before the stock exchanges of Zurich and Basel. This institution further enhanced Geneva’s growing reputation as a financial center. The Geneva Bourse was the fifth largest stock exchange in Europe at the time, after Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London and Paris. Numerous foreign securities were already being traded there.

  • A center of wealth management and trade

A number of commercial banks were established around the turn of the century in Geneva and organized as limited companies. As a result, Geneva’s private banks increasingly specialised in pure wealth management. This activity became increasingly important to the Geneva financial center after the end of the Second World War. In the following decades, the expertise and tradition of private banking in Geneva attracted increasing numbers of Swiss and foreign commercial banks, financial companies and service providers to the region, transforming it into a world capital of wealth management.

Geneva

world capital

of wealth management

Geneva Financial Center