A private institution, established 1972.

The House was established in the spring of 1972 in Geneva’s Place de la Concorde. Its founding partners — bankers from older institutions who had concluded that the post-war industrialisation of private banking did not serve the principals they had been entrusted to protect — set out a charter of restraint that, in substance, remains in force today.

The original partnership documents are kept under glass in the boardroom of the Geneva head office. They state, plainly: do not advertise; do not pursue scale; do not engage in any line of business which the Senior Partner would not explain to his grandchildren.

Continental Bank serves a small, finite roster of principals, family offices, and institutional clients on terms set out at the start of each relationship and revised only with the Client’s written consent. Each Client is assigned a single named relationship manager. There is no general telephone number. We do not maintain a call centre. We do not maintain a marketing database.

The Bank operates from six co-ordinated desks: Geneva (1972), London (1981), Luxembourg (1986), Singapore (1997), Dubai (2009), and a representative office in New York (2014). Each desk operates under the same protocols, the same ledger, and the same standard of service.

The Bank is not, and has never been, listed on a stock exchange. The Partnership holds itself accountable to its Clients, to its prudential regulator, and to no other party.

Continental Bank does not accept walk-in introductions. A new relationship begins with an introduction from an existing Client, a counsel of long standing, or a senior officer of the Bank. The introduction is followed by a private conversation, an exchange of formal documents, and a review by the partner responsible for the corresponding desk.