Spillover

Switzerland as a leading international financial centre has faced a number of challenges in recent years: the global financial crisis of 2007–09; the near-collapse of UBS, the country’s largest bank, in 2008; disputes over Swiss banking secrecy; the 2010 Euro crisis; and, most recently, the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by its rival UBS. In Spillover, Peter Püntener, a freelance photographer and former employee of the Swiss National Bank, attempts to visually capture these far-reaching events. At the core of the book are portraits of around 90 decision-makers who were closely involved in overcoming these crises. They are supplemented with views of rooms and buildings of Swiss and European institutions where the decisions were actually made. The effects of the bursting real-estate bubble in individual euro-zone countries in 2008 become strikingly visible in views of landscapes in Greece, Ireland, and Spain, which are juxtaposed with pictures of the simultaneous construction boom in Switzerland. An essay by Tobias Straumann, professor of modern and economic history at the University of Zurich, quotes from interviews with portrayed protagonists, while a chronology of events completes this visual account of the greatest challenges the Swiss financial centre has been facing in decades, and invites a reflection on its future. Text in English and German.