Swiss Bank Corporation: 1945-1998

Swiss Bank Corporation found itself in relatively strong financial condition at the end of World War II, with 1.8 billion CHF of assets By contrast, the Basler Handelsbank (Commercial Bank of Basel), founded in 1862 and one of the largest banks in Switzerland, was insolvent at the end of the war and was consequently acquired by SBC in 1945. SBC remained among the Swiss government's leading underwriters of debt in the post-war years. However, by 1947 SBC was shifting its focus back to its traditional business of lending money principally to private companies as part of the postwar rebuilding of Europe Meanwhile, the firm continued its expansion to international markets, particularly the United States where SBC focused primarily on commercial banking for corporate clients. Within Switzerland, SBC remained a full service bank with a domestic retail banking network and an asset management business
SBC prospered throughout the 1950s and embarked on a period of sustained growth. The bank, which had entered the 1950s with 31 Branch Offices in Switzerland and three abroad, more than doubled its assets from the end of the war to 4 billion CHF by the end of the 1950s and doubled assets again by the mid-1960s, exceeding 10 billion CHF in 1965 SBC acquired Banque Populaire Valaisanne,  and the Banque Populaire de Sierre. The firm continued to open new offices in the U.S. in the mid-1960s and it was also at this time that SBC began to expand into Asia and opened representative offices throughout Latin America. The bank opened a full branch office in Tokyo in 1970. The bank also made a number of acquisitions to enhance its position in various products including private banking

As its own home market was highly competitive, SBC focused on commercial banking for American and other multinational companies. Through 1979, SBC was consistently the largest of the three major Swiss Bank by assets, except for short periods in 1962 and 1968 when UBS temporarily moved ahead of SBC. After 1979, although its balance sheet had grown to 74 billion CHF of assets, the bank would typically rank second to UBS which firmly established itself as the largest Swiss bank in the 1980sSBC would retain this position for the next 15 years untilleapfrogged into the top spot following its 1995 acquisitions of and