Basel history

Traffic and industrialisation changed Basel in the 19th century: a steamboat moored here for the first time in 1832.

Eight years later, the first railway in Switzerland ran on the route between Saint-Louis and Basel, for which a station was opened within the city walls in 1845.

From 1872 he increasingly adopted the views of American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan on kinship.

World history was written with the First Zionist World Congress in Basel in 1897, which started the process for the founding of the State of Israel.

Modern goods transport started at the Upper Rhine (up to Schweizerhalle) in 1904, and culminated in the building of the St Johann Rhine harbour and the two docks in Kleinhüningen.

Over decades, commerce has provided the most jobs, above all in the retail trade (Coop). In order to promote the sales of Swiss products, the Mustermesse (Sample Fair) took place in Basel for the first time 1917, from which the Messe Basel has evolved with its many trade fairs.

A college of further education (Volkshochschule) was founded in 1919.

Basel is an important distributing centre for foreign trade that produces one-third of the total Swiss Customs’ revenue and is the site of the Bank for International Settlements (1930). The city is one of the nodal points of the railways of Europe and is an equally important river port.

While the division into four faculties barely changed during the first few centuries, the 19th century saw greater differentiation, which led to the founding of the Faculty of Science in 1937.

The new university buildings were completed in 1939; the university library contains manuscripts of the religious reformers Martin Luther, Erasmus, Huldrych Zwingli, and Philipp Melanchthon and of acts of the Ecumenical Council.

The BCBS was established in 1974 by the central bank governors of the Group of Ten (G10) countries, as a response to disruptions in financial markets.

The Committee's first meeting took place in February 1975, and meetings have been held regularly three or four times a year since.

In May 1983, the Concordat was revised and re-issued as Principles for the supervision of banks' foreign establishments.

minimum capital requirements, which sought to develop and expand the standardised rules set out in the 1988 Accord

1989: The University of Basel is a founding member of the European confederation of universities in the Upper Rhine region (Eucor). The alliance greatly simplifying studies across borders in the region.link.zoom

In April 1996, another document was issued explaining how Committee members intended to recognise the effects of multilateral netting. It was amended in November 1991 to more precisely define the general provisions or general loan loss reserves that could be included in the capital adequacy calculation.

In July 1992, certain principles of the Concordat were reformulated and published as the Minimum standards for the supervision of international banking groups and their cross-border establishments.

In April 1995, the Committee issued another amendment, to take effect at the end of that year, to recognise the effects of bilateral netting of banks' credit exposures in derivative products and to expand the matrix of add-on factors.

In October 1996, the Committee released a report on The supervision of cross-border banking, drawn up by a joint working group that included supervisors from non-G10 jurisdictions and offshore centres.

When first published in September 1997, the paper set out 25 basic principles that the Basel Committee believed should be in place for a supervisory system to be effective.

When the Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft SBG (Union Bank of Switzerland UBS) and the Schweizerische Bankverein SBV (Swiss Bank Corporation) merged to form the UBS in 1998, Basel – together with Zurich – became the headquarters of a leading global financial institute.

Following the June 2004 release, which focused primarily on the banking book, the Committee turned its attention to the trading book.

To help address this issue, the Committee issued guidance on information-sharing in 2006, followed by advice on supervisory cooperation and allocation mechanisms in the context of the advanced measurement approaches for operational risk.

At at glance Laying the foundation: international cooperation of banking supervision Basel I: the Basel Capital Accord Basel II: the new capital framework Basel III: responding to the 2007-09 financial crisis

In September 2010, the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS) announced higher global minimum capital standards for commercial banks.

in 2013, margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives and capital requirements for banks' equity in funds

In September 2014, Art Basel launches its Crowdfunding Initiative in partnership with Kickstarter to support non-profit visual arts organizations.

During the 2015 Art Basel in Hong Kong show, Art Basel and BMW present the first iteration of the BMW Art Journey, a joint initiative to recognize and support emerging artists worldwide.

The Art Basel Cities initiative is announced during the 2016 Hong Kong edition of Art Basel in March.