The Role of Business Services in the Development of European Commodity Trading Companies in the 20th Century

Abstract

After the end of World War II, Switzerland became a key hub for international commodity traders, even though most of the commodities they were dealing in were sourced from outside of Switzerland and were not meant for Swiss producers, refiners or consumers. The main aim of this chapter is to analyze why Switzerland became the centre for international commodity trading in the Western world. The chapter will especially focus on the period from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s. Given that commodity trading companies throughout history have been notoriously closed to external scrutiny, the chapter by need is mainly based on publicly available material. The chapter utilizes the concept of collective entrepreneurship as an analytical framework to situate the development.

Citation

Storli, E. (2023), "The Role of Business Services in the Development of European Commodity Trading Companies in the 20th Century", Fernández Pérez, P. and San Román, E. (Ed.) Collective Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary European Services Industries: A Long Term Approach (Frontiers of Management History), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-950-820231001