SwissFirst Bank

SwissFirst Bank was a Swiss investment bank and financial services provider headquartered in Zurich. Founded by Thomas Matter in 1999, the firm specialized in brokerage, corporate finance, and asset management. In 2005, the bank merged with Bank Bellevue to form Swissfirst AG, an entity that was subsequently renamed the Bellevue Group in 2007. Although SwissFirst Bank was a financial institution, its successor is highly relevant to the life sciences industry as the manager of BB Biotech AG, one of the world's largest biotechnology investment companies. BB Biotech maintains a significant portfolio of global therapeutic and diagnostic companies, making the SwissFirst/Bellevue lineage a key part of the biotech investment landscape. The bank is also historically associated with the "Swissfirst affair," a major legal investigation into insider trading that followed its 2005 merger.