8. Hans-Rudolf Merz: Absent
On September 20, when a small circle of concerned from the SNB, UBS and regulator Finma met in Bern, Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz suffered a cardiac arrest at his home. He was in a coma for several days and his deputy, Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf took over in his stead.
The minister conceded much later, in 2016, that the cardiac arrest probably had been a direct consequence of his being overworked due to the crisis. On the day of his cardiac arrest, Merz had understood that the government would have to come up with a guarantee worth as much as 60 billion francs, three times as much as the state had managed to cut its debt by: «This simply knocked me out,» he said.
Merz however wasn’t yet done with dealing with banks. In 2009 he was forced to retreat from a now-famous dictum that foreign jurisdictions would fail to break Swiss banking secrecy. He had to ask the government to agree to administrative assistance in tax matters. In 2010, he stepped down and his successor, Widmer-Schlumpf, implemented a new strategy that put Swiss banking on a new footing, based on business with taxed assets only. The 75-year-old former politician is in retirement in Herisau, a small city in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden.
(Pictures: Keystone, Partners Group, Union Bancaire Privée, Blackrock, finews.asia)
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