Switzerland succeeds in business not because it is mysterious, but because it is systemically reliable. Its model combines political neutrality, legal predictability, decentralised federalism, a hard-currency tradition, and extreme specialisation in high-value sectors. Basel matters because it is not only a Swiss city: it is one of the world’s rule-making capitals for finance, home to the BIS and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Zurich matters because it concentrates banking, insurance and asset management. Geneva matters because diplomacy and commodities trading intersect there. And the wider Swiss economy matters because it still manufactures globally valuable things — drugs, instruments, engineering systems, watches, diagnostics, specialty chemicals — at a scale few rich service economies still manage.

