Wealth
What people earn is a private matter; it is seldom discussed, even among friends.
Switzerland is a rich country and most people can live well. Although some are better off than others, they are expected to act modestly and not to flaunt their wealth.
Eight Swiss citizens figured in the 2007 list of the 500 richest people in the world drawn up by the US magazine Forbes. However, only one - Ernesto Bertarelli - made the top hundred (in 76th place), with a fortune of 8.8 billion dollars.
The Forbes list included 15 foreign residents of Switzerland, eight of them from Germany. The richest person in Switzerland, however, was Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish head of the IKEA furniture giant, whose fortune was put at 33 billion dollars, making him the fourth richest man in the world.
Switzerland attracts the wealthy; the 2006 list of the 300 richest people in Switzerland drawn up by the Swiss magazine Bilanz showed that half of them came from abroad. More than one fifth of them were German, attracted by lower tax rates than at home. More and more Russians are also appearing on the list.
Bilanz put the combined fortune of the richest ten residents of Switzerland at 123 billion francs in 2006. The combined fortune of the richest 300 exceeds Switzerland's gross domestic product of 446 billion francs.
"I come from one of the best families on the right hand shore of Lake Zurich, also known locally as the Gold Coast. (...) Our home was typical of the Swiss understatement. You have it, but you don't flaunt it; you are not resplendent, but respectable. Nothing looks special, but it's all very expensive. Instead of eating caviar from golden plates, you serve soup in dishes that look as though they come from the ABM (Swiss department store chain), but are worth at least a thousand francs each."
Fritz Zorn (1944 - 1976), Mars