Guardian – There are no oil rigs on Lake Geneva but each year enough oil to meet Swiss needs 75 times over is traded electronically in the nondescript offices that hug the shore of the largest lake in the Alps.
There aren’t any coffee plantations in Switzerland either, but more than 60% of the world’s coffee beans pass – electronically – through the country. And it has some of the finest pastures in western Europe, but only enough to grow a tiny fraction of the 80m tonnes of grains and oil seeds that are bought and sold by its traders every year.
