Two businessmen stand under an umbrella in front of the headquarters of Credit Suisse on Paradeplatz, the symbolic centre of the Swiss banking industry in central Zurich. The Swiss banking industry holds an estimated 6,352 billion Swiss Francs (USD 7,000 billion) in assets, more than half of it foreign, benefiting from the country's famous banking secrecy laws. The late British politician Harold Wilson once referred to Swiss bankers and their secrets as the 'gnomes of Zurich' and they are now increasingly in the spotlight of European finance ministers chasing unpaid taxes on an estimated USD 1,000 billion in undeclared European assets.