Two recent pieces of evidence point to an uncomfortable paradox in Swiss finance.
Switzerland has enormous pools of institutional capital. It also produces world-class innovation and increasingly valuable scale-ups.
Yet Swiss capital is proving remarkably effective at financing US AI infrastructure, while Swiss growth companies increasingly rely on foreign capital to scale.
What is missing between Swiss savings and Swiss productive risk?
In this article, I explore four hypotheses: underwriting depth, specialist intermediation, institutional governance and exit infrastructure.
None is a conclusion.
Together, I think they raise a question worth a much broader debate about the depth and function of Switzerland’s capital markets.