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Our founding father. Alfred Escher.

Al­fred Es­cher is one of the most im­port­ant per­son­al­it­ies of Swiss polit­ics and eco­nomic his­tory. We are proud to call him our founder. An in­sight into an in­spir­ing life. And into the time­less­ness of val­ues such as de­term­in­a­tion, foresight, and en­tre­pren­eur­ship.

Born in Zurich. De­voted to his coun­try.

Busi­ness­man and politi­cian Al­fred Es­cher ranks among the most dis­tin­guished per­son­al­it­ies of the 19th cen­tury and the founders of mod­ern Switzer­land. To this day he is con­sidered the driv­ing force be­hind the trans­form­a­tion of a back­wards ag­ri­cul­tural coun­try into a na­tion renowned around the world for its fin­an­cial and eco­nomic com­pet­ence.

Es­cher seemed to have the golden touch: In ad­di­tion to found­ing Credit Suisse, Es­cher also had a hand in es­tab­lish­ing the fed­eral tech­nical uni­ver­sity ETH Zurich, pen­sion pro­vider Swiss Life, the re­in­sur­ance com­pany Swiss Re and the Swiss North­east­ern Rail­way, which was later in­teg­rated into the Swiss na­tional rail­way sys­tem.

As a politi­cian, Es­cher was not­able as the pres­id­ent of the Swiss Na­tional Coun­cil, chair­man of the gov­ern­ment of Can­ton Zurich, and vice chair­man of the Swiss School Coun­cil. With his con­tri­bu­tions to­ward the con­struc­tion of the Got­thard Tun­nel, he also suc­ceeded in lay­ing an­other mile­stone in Switzer­land's struc­tural de­vel­op­ment.

Al­fred Es­cher: A trail­blazer who achieved vir­tu­ally every goal he set for his coun­try.

Found­ing of Credit Suisse

Es­cher was born in 1819 into a coun­try han­di­capped by major struc­tural prob­lems: Twenty-​two can­tons with dif­fer­ent cur­ren­cies; of­fi­cialese that hindered busi­ness, edu­ca­tion, and pro­gress; a prac­tic­ally non-​existent rail­way sys­tem to con­nect Switzer­land to trade op­por­tun­it­ies in Europe.

Early on, Es­cher made the sparsely de­veloped rail­way in­fra­struc­ture a pri­or­ity and re­solved that it should be privately fun­ded. In order to main­tain Switzer­land’s autonomy, he de­term­ined that the cap­ital should come from within Switzer­land and not from abroad. And so on July 5, 1856, Es­cher foun­ded the Sch­weizerische Kred­it­an­stalt, the fore­run­ner to today's Credit Suisse, to fund the pro­ject. Within three days, the shares is­sued for a high of three mil­lion francs, had reached a value of 221 mil­lion francs.

In ad­di­tion to the rail­way pro­ject, the Sch­weizerische Kred­it­an­stalt began soon after to in­vest in many other areas of in­dustry. In this way, it also made pos­sible nu­mer­ous fledgling busi­nesses and en­ter­prises.

A vis­ion­ary with a healthy dose of real­ity, Es­cher was well aware of the risks of big un­der­tak­ings and con­cerned for the safe­guard­ing of people and pro­jects. Thus in 1857 he foun­ded Switzer­land's first pen­sion pro­gram, guar­an­teed by Credit Suisse funds. In 1863, he laid the fin­an­cial basis for the hedging of a new re­in­sur­ance com­pany. These two in­sti­tu­tions, Swiss Life and Swiss Re, as well as Credit Suisse, are to this day world am­bas­sad­ors for Swiss in­sur­ance and fin­an­cial ex­pert­ise. After es­tab­lish­ing Credit Suisse, Al­fred Es­cher served as chair­man of its board for more than 20 years, from 1856 to 1877 and again from 1880 to 1882. A life's work that bore many fruit.

Got­thard Tun­nel. A break­through.

In 1872, work star­ted on the Got­thard rail­way and its center­piece – the Got­thard Tun­nel. A mam­moth un­der­tak­ing with enorm­ous de­mands on cap­ital and many chal­lenges for the en­gin­eers in­volved. Es­cher fought vehe­mently for the com­ple­tion of the tun­nel, which would offer an at­tract­ive transit route between south­ern and cent­ral Europe and free Switzer­land from its eco­nomic isol­a­tion for good. When the tun­nel opened in 1882, the Swiss eco­nomy wasn't the only be­ne­fi­ciary. Tour­ists also be­nefited from the won­drous op­por­tun­it­ies af­forded by this rail­way route. In this sense, Es­cher made Switzer­land's riches ac­cess­ible to the masses.

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