Spillover: Switzerland's Financial Center in Crisis Mode--Portraits of Decision-Makers

A visual examination of the recent past of Switzerland's financial center and an invitation to reflect on its future.

Switzerland, as a leading international financial center, has faced many 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 ninety decision-makers who were involved in overcoming these crises. They are supplemented with views of rooms and buildings of Swiss and European institutions where the decisions were made. The effects of the bursting real-estate bubble in individual eurozone 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, and a chronology of events completes this visual account of the greatest challenges the Swiss financial center has been facing and invites a reflection on its future.