Industry WIKI

The European Union-wide banking stress test 2016 was conducted by the European Banking Authority (EBA) in order to assess the resilience of financial institutions in the European Union to a hypothetical adverse market scenario. The stress test was formally launched on 24 February 2016 with a publication of the final methodology and templates as well as the scenarios. It covered over 70%

Atom Asset Exchange (AAX) was a cryptocurrency exchange that was based in Hong Kong.

Abra is a cryptocurrency wallet and exchange, and digital asset services company with offices in several countries. Its offerings include Abra Private, an SEC-registered investment advisory service for high-net-worth investors and family offices; Abra Prime, a prime broker for digital asset trading, lending, and derivatives; and Abra Treasury, which enables companies to add Bitcoin and d

Access to finance is the ability of individuals or enterprises to obtain financial services, including credit, deposit, payment, insurance, and other risk management services. Those who involuntarily have no or only limited access to financial services are referred to as the unbanked or underbanked, respectively. Areas with inadequate banking services are referred to as banking deserts.

Rangers is a professional football club in Scotland founded in 1872. The club entered financial difficulties during the late 2000s, and the club (trading as The Rangers Football Club plc) entered administration in February 2012. It owed substantial amounts to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), who subsequently refused to allow Rangers to exit administration via a company voluntary arrangemen

Alan M. Taylor (born 15 November 1964) is an economist, academic, and policymaker. He is a professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He is also a Research Associate

An alternative financial service (AFS) is a financial service provided outside traditional banking institutions, on which many low-income individuals depend. In developing countries, these services often take the form of microfinance. In developed countries, the services may be similar to those provided by banks and include payday loans, rent-to-own agreements, pawnshops, refund anticipa

Arkham (legally named Arkham Intelligence, Inc.) is an American company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform as well as a public data application that enables users to analyze blockchain and cryptocurrency activity.

The Association of German Public Banks (German: Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, generally referred to as VÖB) is a leading association within the German banking sector, bringing together most of the German public banking sector except the local-level savings banks (German: Sparkassen). Its membership includes 63 banks, including the Landesbanks that are also members of th

Atlantic Money is a London-headquartered financial technology company that offers international money transfers for a fixed fee. The firm was founded in 2020 and officially launched in 2022 by two Americans, Neeraj Baid and Patrick Kavanagh, both early employees of the listed US financial services company Robinhood.

Backwardation is a market condition where the price of a commodity's forward or futures contract price is trading below the spot price.

A bad bank is a corporate structure which isolates illiquid and high risk assets (typically non-performing loans) held by a bank or a financial organisation, or perhaps a group of banks or financial organisations.

Bank of Ceylon (BOC; Sinhala: ලංකා බැංකුව Lanka Bænkuwa, Tamil: இலங்கை வங்கி Ilangai Vangi) is a state-owned, major commercial bank in Sri Lanka. Its head office is located in an iconic cylindrical building in Colombo.

Bank regulation and supervision refers to a form of financial regulation which subjects banks to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines, enforced by a financial supervisory authority or supervisor, with semantic variations across jurisdictions. By and large, bank regulation and supervision aims at ensuring the stability of the banking sector and at fostering transparency betwe

The Bankcard-Servicenetz (lit. 'bank card service network') is a German ATM card interbank network group provided by the Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken services group. Technically it is not an interbank network but uses the pre-existing girocard network. Member banks of this cash credit group charge ATM usage fees at a low level and most customers of the co-operative banks enjoy free w

Banking in Bhutan, a small country in East Asia, is an industry that has grown slowly as the country has pursued modernization. The country has a vibrant informal culture of finance which only weakly integrates formal financial services.

Banking in Sudan covers the history, development and structure of banking in the Sudan. From the inheritance of the banking system from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to the establishment of the Sudan central bank in 1959 and development of Islamic banking in the mid 1970s.

A barker channel is a form of digital signage, operating in the form of a television channel that is entirely composed of sales promotion and advertising, usually marketing various features of the service carrying the channel. The name is derived from the circus barker, who stood outside a circus and shouted to passers-by to encourage them to enter to view the entertainment being provide

Barry Julian Eichengreen (born 1952) is an American economist and economic historian who is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. Eichengreen is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy R

Beatrice Foods Company was a major American conglomerate founded in 1894. One of the best-known food processing companies in the U.S., Beatrice owned many well-known brands such as Tropicana, Krispy Kreme, Jolly Rancher, Orville Redenbacher's, Swiss Miss, Peter Pan, Avis, Milk Duds, Samsonite, Playtex, La Choy and Dannon. It also owned several chemical and consumer goods companies until

William F. Chisholm Jr. is an American businessman. He is the managing partner and chief investment officer for STG Partners, LLC, a private equity firm, and has been the owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Boston Celtics since 2025. He purchased the Celtics for a record $6.1 billion.

Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. It was initially based in China, then moved to Japan, subsequently left Japan for Malta, and now has no official company headquarters.

BitClout was an open source blockchain-based social media platform. On the platform, users could post short-form writings and photos, award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon, as well as buy and sell "creator coins" (personalized tokens whose value depends on people's reputations). BitClout ran on a custom proof of work blockchain, and was a prototype of wha

Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc, and is registered in the British Virgin Islands and regulated in El Salvador. Bitfinex was founded in 2012. It was originally a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange, and later added support for other cryptocurrencies. Bitfinex was one of the first professional platforms built for cryptocurrency trading. Bitfinex is the worl

bitFlyer is a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Tokyo. It was founded in 2014 and is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan.

Bitget is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2018.

Bitkub is a Thailand-based cryptocurrency exchange operated by Bitkub Online Co., Ltd. (Thai: บริษัทบิทคับ ออนไลน์ จำกัด) under its parent group Bitkub Capital Group Holdings (Bitkub Capital Co., Ltd.). The company was founded in 2018 by Jirayut Srupsrisopa and was among the first exchanges to receive a digital asset license from Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 201

BitMEX was a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative trading platform incorporated in the Seychelles. It was operated by HDR Global Trading Limited.

BitPay is a cryptocurrency payment service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in May 2011 by Tony Gallippi and Stephen Pair. BitPay provides crypto payment processing services for merchants and a cryptocurrency wallet available on mobile and desktop.

Bitstamp is a Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2011. Considered the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, its business operations are conducted from its registered headquarters in Luxembourg City, with a satellite office in Ljubljana.

Blockchain.com (formerly Blockchain.info) is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency brokerage and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and ana

Braintree is an American company that primarily deals in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies. The company was acquired by PayPal on September 26, 2013.

BTCPay Server is a free and open-source, self-hosted Bitcoin payment processor created in 2017 by Nicolas Dorier. The software allows merchants to accept bitcoin payments directly to their own wallets rather than through a centralized processor, and supports both on-chain Bitcoin and Lightning Network payments.

Bullish is a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in George Town, Cayman Islands. It is licensed in Germany, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and New York State.

Bybit is a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange that was originally founded in China. The platform has faced regulatory warnings in several jurisdictions.

Celsius Network LLC was a cryptocurrency company. Headquartered in Hoboken, New Jersey, Celsius maintained offices in four countries and operated globally. Users could deposit a range of cryptocurrency digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, into a Celsius wallet to earn a percentage yield, and could take out loans by pledging their cryptocurrencies as security. As of May 2022, t

The Century 21 Organisation was a group of companies founded by Gerry Anderson in the early 1960s to expand on his television production company, AP Films (APF; later Century 21 Productions). In addition to APF, the group included:

Coin's Financial School is an 1894 pamphlet written by lawyer, politician and resort founder William Hope Harvey (1851–1936). It advocated a return to bimetallism, where the value of a monetary unit is defined as a certain amount of two different kinds of metals, often gold and silver. In the book, Harvey charged that the demonetization of silver caused by the Coinage Act of 1873 led to

Coinbase Global, Inc. is an American cryptocurrency exchange. It was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase has over 100 million users, and is the largest U.S. based cryptocurrency exchange as well as the world's biggest bitcoin custodian, as of 2024. The company operates in more than 100 countries and holds nearly US$516 billion in assets, including nearly 12 perce

Coincheck is a Japanese bitcoin wallet and exchange service headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded by Koichiro Wada and Yusuke Otsuka. It operates exchanges between bitcoin, ether and fiat currencies in Japan, and bitcoin transactions and storage in some countries.

CoinEx was a cryptocurrency exchange based in Hong Kong. Before shutting down its operations in 2026, it operated in Iran and facilitated transfers of more than US$3.8 billion in cryptocurrency linked to Iranian entities.

CoinJar is a centralised digital currency exchange with the main function to facilitate the trading of cryptocurrencies by its users and allow to convert these assets into cash. It is one of the earliest cryptocurrency exchanges to launch in Australia.

A community development bank (CDB) or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) is a development bank or credit union that focus on serving people who have been locked out of the traditional financial systems such as the unbanked or underbanked in deprived local communities. They emphasize the long term development of communities and provide loans such as micro-finance or ventu

Consensys is a private blockchain software technology company founded by Joseph Lubin and based in Fort Worth.

A credit rating is an evaluation of the credit risk of a prospective debtor (an individual, a business, company or a government). It is the practice of predicting or forecasting the ability of a supposed debtor to pay back the debt or default. The credit rating represents an evaluation from a credit rating agency of the qualitative and quantitative information for the prospective debtor,

The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former United States Representative from Nebraska, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. In his address, Bryan supported "free silver" (i.e. bimetallism), which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. He decried the gold standard, famously concluding the speech, "you shall not crucify m

Crypto.com is a Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange company that offers various financial services, including an app, exchange, and noncustodial DeFi wallet, NFT marketplace, and direct payment service in cryptocurrency. As of June 2023, the company reportedly had 100 million customers and 4,000 employees.

Cryptopia was an international cryptocurrency exchange based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Founded in 2014 by Rob Dawson and Adam Clark, it was among the earliest cryptocurrency services started in the country, and was responsible for launching the first stablecoin pegged to the New Zealand dollar. Cryptopia experienced substantial growth in 2017 from 30,000 users to over 1.4 million by

David Scott Blitzer (born September 7, 1969) is an American investor and sports team owner. Blitzer is the chairman of the private equity firm Blackstone's tactical opportunities division and managing partner of the New Jersey Devils ice hockey team and the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. He additionally owns several association football clubs under Global Football Holdings and holds

David Bonderman (November 27, 1942 – December 11, 2024) was an American billionaire businessman. He was the founding partner of TPG Inc. (formerly Texas Pacific Group), and its Asian affiliate, Newbridge Capital. He was also one of the minority owners of the NBA's Boston Celtics as well as the co-founder and co-majority owner (along with Jerry Bruckheimer) of the Seattle Kraken of the Na

Deep state is a term used for unauthorized secret networks of power operating within a government but independent of its political leadership, in pursuit of their own agendas and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations and is often associated with conspiracy theories.

Deposit insurance, deposit protection or deposit guarantee is a measure implemented in many countries to protect bank depositors, in full or in part, from losses caused by a bank's inability to pay its debts when due. Deposit insurance or deposit guarantee systems are one component of a financial system safety net that promotes financial stability, and are typically integrated with bank

The Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband (DSGV, lit. 'German association of savings banks and money transfers') is the association of German savings banks (German: Sparkassen) and the apex entity of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, the European Union's second-largest financial services group (after BNP Paribas) with 2.5 trillion euros combined assets as of end-2023. Germany's savings banks,

Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG) is an American investment company focusing on the digital currency market and decentralized technologies. It is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The subsidiaries include Grayscale Investments, Yuma, Foundry, Luno, and Fortitude Mining. It also formerly owned the now-inactive Genesis Global Holdco and CoinDesk.

Dinarak (Al-Mutakamilah for Payments Services via Mobile Phone) is a mobile wallet, money transfer, electronic bill payment, funds disbursement service, licensed by the Central Bank of Jordan under the JoMoPay national switch and launched in late 2015 as Dinarak wallet as part of the Jordanian central bank's efforts to advocate financial inclusion for the un-banked segment of the Jordani

Dogecoin ( DOHJ-koyn or DOHZH-koyn, Abbreviation: DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some

ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting) was a computer technology that automated bank bookkeeping and check processing. Developed at the nonprofit research institution SRI International under contract from Bank of America, the project began in 1950 and was publicly revealed in September 1955.

The European banking crisis of 1931 was a major episode of financial instability that peaked with the collapse of several major banks in Austria and Germany, including Creditanstalt on 11 May 1931, Landesbank der Rheinprovinz on 11 July 1931, and Danat-Bank on 13 July 1931. It triggered Germany's exit from the gold standard on 15 July 1931, followed by the UK on 19 September 1931, and ex

The Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is one of the Federal Ministries of Nigeria.

Financial inclusion is the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services. It refers to processes by which individuals and businesses can access appropriate, affordable, and timely financial products and services—which include banking, loan, equity, and insurance products. It provides paths to enhance inclusiveness in economic growth by enabling the unbanked po

From 1886 until 1959, the price of a 6.5 US fl oz (190 mL) glass or bottle of the soft drink Coca-Cola was set at five cents (or one nickel), and remained fixed with very little local fluctuation. The Coca-Cola Company was able to maintain this price for several reasons, including bottling contracts, advertisements, vending machines, and a relatively low rate of inflation (with five cent

Four Seasons Hotels Limited, trading as Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, is a Canadian luxury hotel and resort company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of 2026, Four Seasons operates more than 130 hotels and resorts worldwide. Since 2007, Bill Gates (through Cascade Investment) and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (through Kingdom Holding Company) have been majority owners of the

FTX Trading Ltd., trading as FTX (Futures Exchange), is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and collapsed in 2022.

A Funnyback is a type of one-dollar silver certificate produced in 1928 and 1934 in the United States. People referred to the note as a "Funnyback" based on the significantly lighter green ink and unusual font printed on the reverse.

Garantex was a Russian cryptocurrency exchange. The company provided an exchange of Russian rubles to cryptocurrencies and international money transfers. It was tied to sanctioned individuals following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the Russian government, criminal organizations, and terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, among other illicit actors. It was co-fou

Gemini Space Station Inc. (Gemini) is an American cryptocurrency exchange and custodian bank. It was founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

Genesis is a cryptocurrency intermediary for institutional investors, with Digital Currency Group (DCG) as its parent company.

The German Banking Industry Committee (GBIC) (German: Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft / DK), known until 2011 as the Central Credit Committee (German: Zentraler Kreditausschuss / ZKA) is an industry association of the German banking industry. Its decisions are held normative for the national banking sector – either directly by interbank treaties or indirectly by preparing a corresponding m

The German public banking sector (German: Öffentliches Kreditwesen) represents a significant share of the broader banking sector in Germany. Unlike in most other Western and Central European countries, German public-sector banks have been present since the early phases of formalization of banking entities in the early modern period and have never lost their collective significance. They

Gharar (Arabic: غرر) literally means uncertainty, hazard, chance or risk. It is a negative element in mu'amalat fiqh (transactional Islamic jurisprudence), like riba (usury) and maisir (gambling).

Goliath Ventures was a cryptocurrency investment firm based in Orlando, Florida. On February 24, 2026, the United States Department of Justice announced the arrest of the firm's founder and chief executive officer, Christopher Alexander Delgado, on charges of wire fraud and money laundering, alleging that the firm had operated as a Ponzi scheme. On June 30, 2026, Delgado pleaded guilty t

Guggenheim Partners, Inc is an American global investment and advisory financial services firm headquartered in New York City that engages in investment banking, asset management, capital markets services, and insurance services. Guggenheim has approximately 2,000 employees. The firm has additional offices in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It facilitates deals in many f

HTX, formerly known as Huobi, is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in China, (Chinese: 火币网; pinyin: Huǒbìwǎng), HTX now has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the United States. In August 2018, it became a publicly listed Hong Kong company. According to Bloomberg, it is owned by cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun.

HyperVerse is a defunct cryptocurrency hedge fund (formerly HyperNation, then HyperFund, then HyperVerse in 2021). The collapse of the company resulted in approximately $1.3 billion in customer losses.

Immutable Pty Ltd (formerly Fuel Games) is an Australian cryptocurrency company which develops blockchain games and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company was founded in 2018 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

Independent Reserve is an Australian-based digital currency exchange founded in 2013. They are an order book exchange and an OTC desk.

The Chinese insurance industry has experienced rapid expansion over the past decade.

John Joseph D'Agostino is an American business executive and entrepreneur. D'Agostino is a senior advisor to Coinbase and Chairman of US Asset Management Committee for the Department for International Trade. He previously was managing director at the world's largest fund governance firm DMS Offshore, where he was also on the board of hedge funds providing independent oversight. He was pr

Kabutochō (Japanese: 兜町), or more formally Nihonbashi Kabutochō (Japanese: 日本橋兜町), is a neighborhood of Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. It is the location of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and many securities companies, so is considered Japan's equivalent of Wall Street in New York City.

KlickEx is a New Zealand fintech company that provides a payment system for domestic, low value electronic foreign exchange transactions to Polynesian countries using a smart market retail system.

Klöckner & Co SE (also known as Klöckner, KlöCo, or KCO) is a producer-independent processor of steel and metal products. With a network of 110 warehousing and processing locations, Klöckner & Co supplies over 60,000 customers, mainly in Europe and North America.

Kraken (legally named Payward, Inc.) is a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It is the first cryptocurrency company to obtain a bank charter. In 2025, Kraken began allowing the trading of tokenized equities by non-US customers.

KuCoin is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange. It was founded in China in 2017, but was later moved to Singapore following the Chinese government's restrictions on cryptocurrency companies, and eventually to the Seychelles.

Leslie Lee Alexander (born June 30, 1943) is an American attorney, businessman and financier. He is a former bond trader from New York. He formerly owned the National Basketball Association (NBA) team Houston Rockets for 24 years, from 1993 to 2017.

Liberty Reserve was a Costa Rica-based centralized digital currency service that billed itself as the "oldest, safest and most popular payment processor, serving millions all around a world". Liberty Reserve was conceived as a "PayPal for the unbanked," allowing the 2.5 billion people without bank accounts or credit histories to participate in the modern economy. The site had over one mi

Litecoin (abbreviation: LTC) is a cryptocurrency and open-source software project created by Charlie Lee and released in 2011. Its software was derived from Bitcoin's codebase. Litecoin uses a scrypt-based proof-of-work system, targets a block interval of 2.5 minutes, and has a maximum supply of 84 million litecoins.

A marketing co-operation or marketing cooperation is a partnership of at least two companies on the value chain level of marketing with the objective to tap the full potential of a market by bundling specific competences or resources. Other terms for marketing co-operation are marketing alliance, marketing partnership, co-marketing, and cross-marketing. Sometimes, called as Consortium as

Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA or MiCAR) is a regulation in European Union (EU) law that establishes a regulatory framework for crypto-assets in the EU, including cryptocurrencies, security tokens and stablecoins. It was adopted by the EU Parliament on 20 April 2023 and has applied in full since December 2024.

In organized sports, match fixing (also known as game fixing, race fixing, throwing, rigging, hippodroming, or more generally sports fixing) is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a predetermined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookm

Milla de Oro (English for Golden Mile) is the main financial district of Puerto Rico, containing the largest agglomeration of corporate investment, banking, and financial institutions in the Caribbean. Located in the Hato Rey business center of San Juan, the capital municipality of the archipelago and island, it is concentrated in the sections of Juan Ponce de León Avenue and Luis Muñoz

The Ministry of Finance is a government ministry of the Republic of Liberia. As of 2024, the Liberian Finance Minister is Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, who was confirmed in September 2024. The minister is appointed by the President of Liberia, with the consent of Senate of Liberia.

MobileCoin, also known as Sentz, is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency developed by MobileCoin Inc., which was founded in 2017 by Josh Goldbard and Shane Glynn.

Moneris (formerly "Moneris Solutions") is a Canadian financial technology company that specializes in payment processing.

Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in 2010, it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide by early 2014, when it abruptly ceased operations amid revelations of its involvement in the loss/theft of hundreds of thousands of bitcoin, then worth hundreds of millions in US dollars.

Murex is a financial services company that provides financial software (type of Front End Dealing System) for trading, treasury management, risk management, and post-trade operations. It was founded in 1986 by Laurent Néel and Salim Edde.

Nihonbashi (日本橋, Nihonbashi; Japanese pronunciation: [ɲ̟ì.hó̞ḿ.bä́.ɕí], also romanized as Nihombashi) is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, which sprung up around the bridge of the same name that has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The current bridge, designed by Tsumaki Yorinaka and co

Numerix is an American capital markets analytics and risk management technology company headquartered in New York City. It develops pricing, risk management, and portfolio analytics software for financial derivatives, structured products, fixed income securities, and convertible securities, serving sell-side institutions including banks and broker-dealers, and buy-side participants inclu

OKX, formerly known as OKEx, is a cryptocurrency exchange based in San Jose, California.

Operation Greenback was a Miami, Florida-based, multi-agency U.S. government task force targeting money laundering connected to drug trafficking.

Paradeplatz (lit. 'Parade square') is a square on Bahnhofstrasse in downtown Zurich, Switzerland. It is one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Switzerland and has become synonymous with wealth and the Swiss banks, being the location of the headquarters of both UBS and Credit Suisse. It is surrounded by four blocks of buildings.