The disappearance of banking secrecy in Switzerland may result in an irrevocable loss of roughly 25% of revenues from Swiss private banks.

Analysts from the Research Institute in Basel (BAK) added that even a complete removal of banking secrecy would not result in total flight of foreign capital in Switzerland, since a significant part of these account are held by institutional investors or Middle Eastern customers unconcerned about banking secrecy.

Moreover, according to the chief economist Urs Müller, “all the accounts in Switzerland aren’t necessarily undeclared funds.” The BAK economist further hypothesized that rising financial markets would permit the financial sector a slightly better than average growth.

Among the chief economist’s other entertaining assumptions and uncorroborated hypotheses are that the Recession has already hit bottom, that the Swiss financial sector will recover first, and that other sectors like machines tools, consumer goods, and luxury watches will follow.

The BAK maintains that the Swiss economy will grow between 1.5% and 2% in the medium term. BAK Basel has 25 years of experience drawing up forecasts of economic development at the Swiss and international level.

Their website (bakbasel.ch) doesn’t indicate what percentage of their forecasts turn out to be correct.