Bank J. Safra Sarasin Brand Guidelines: An 1841 Basel House & a 2013 Safra Merger

A Basel trading house that became a bank.

Bank J. Safra Sarasin dates its history to 20 February 1841, when Johannes Riggenbach founded his own firm in Basel. German and English Wikipedia describe him as the son of a worker at a Basel ribbon factory who had risen from apprentice to partner at the bank Ehinger; his new business, Riggenbach & Cie, dealt in trade, shipping and banking. His son Fritz Riggenbach joined in its second year and later ran it, and by 1876 the house was trading on the floor of the Basel stock exchange.

The Sarasin name arrived with the new century. On 1 January 1900 Alfred Sarasin-Iselin took the firm over from Fritz Riggenbach and, with Arthur Streichenberg-Mylius, formed the general partnership A. Sarasin & Cie. German Wikipedia says the name Sarasin has been part of the firm ever since, and that under Alfred Sarasin it grew into one of the most renowned and long-established private banks in Switzerland. The sources used for this guide do not say how the bank conducted its business between 1933 and 1945.

A grandson, Alfred E. Sarasin, took over the leadership of the bank in the 1950s and chaired the Swiss Bankers Association from 1965 to 1986, German Wikipedia says. In 1987 the partnership became a partnership limited by shares named Bank Sarasin & Cie, and the bank’s shares were listed on the Swiss stock exchange, where they stayed until 2013.

Rabobank, then Safra.

Outside capital came in the 2000s. In 2002 the bank became a public limited company, and the Dutch Rabobank group took up a newly issued block of shares with an option to buy more from existing shareholders. When the option was exercised at the end of 2006, Rabobank held, by April 2007, 46.1 percent of the capital and 68.6 percent of the votes, according to German Wikipedia.

On 25 November 2011 it was announced that the Safra Group of Joseph Safra would buy Rabobank’s stake. German Wikipedia says the sale closed at the end of July 2012, leaving Safra with 50.15 percent of the capital and 71.01 percent of the votes. A public offer completed in October 2012 took its holding to 99.47 percent of the votes, the remaining public shares were cancelled in April 2013, and the shares were delisted from SIX Swiss Exchange on 21 May 2013.

The Safra side brought its own Swiss bank. Bank Jacob Safra (Suisse), named after the family patriarch and based in Geneva, with offices in Zurich, Lugano, Gibraltar and Monaco, had begun in June 2000 by acquiring Uto Bank in Zurich and in 2006 added the Monaco business of Banca del Gottardo, English Wikipedia says. In 2013 the two banks were merged as Bank J. Safra Sarasin AG, joining the new owners’ family name to the Basel name. German Wikipedia traces the Safra family’s banking to Safra Frères et Cie, founded in Aleppo early in the 19th century, with later houses in Beirut, Istanbul and Alexandria; today the J. Safra Group is headquartered in São Paulo.

Private banking and its visual register.

Private banks and wealth managers sell trust, continuity and discretion rather than a product on a shelf, and their identities tend to say so quietly. Many lead with a founder’s surname or a family name set as a restrained serif wordmark, sometimes paired with a crest, a heraldic animal or a founding year. Pictet, for example, says its lion comes from a seventeenth-century family coat of arms and has carried the year 1805 beneath it since 1974.

Colour usually follows the same register. Deep green, navy, burgundy and dark brown are common choices across the sector, often set against cream, stone or white, with a muted gold or brass as an accent. The effect is closer to a bound annual report or a club library than to a retail bank, and bright, saturated colours are rare.

Imagery leans on history and people. Websites and printed material often show portraits of founders and partners, historic premises and archive photographs, alongside heritage timelines that count the generations or the years since the founding. Partnerships and family-controlled houses in particular use their age and ownership structure as part of the message, explaining how decisions are taken and who is responsible.

The content itself is advisory. Typical pages cover wealth planning and succession, family offices, investment views and house research, market commentary, sustainable investing and philanthropy services, often with long-form articles and reports rather than short promotional copy. For designers, the sector is a study in restraint: generous white space, careful typography and a narrow palette do much of the work that louder brands leave to slogans.

A Basel head office with international reach.

The bank advises on and manages assets for private and institutional clients and runs an investment-fund business that includes sustainability funds, German Wikipedia says; investment foundations, corporate finance and financial analysis complete the offer. German Wikipedia puts the group’s staff at 2,425 full-time equivalents at the end of 2022. Besides the Basel head office, the group has offices in Swiss cities including Geneva, Lugano and Zurich, and abroad in places such as London, Luxembourg, Monaco, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. In September 2019 it was one of the 130 founding signatories of the Principles for Responsible Banking, the United Nations-backed banking initiative. In February 2022 finews.ch reported that Bank Zweiplus, in which the group had held a majority, had become a wholly owned subsidiary.

In March 2026 the group completed the purchase of a majority stake of about 71 percent in Saxo Bank, the Danish online investment and trading bank, after approvals from FINMA and the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, according to a group press release published on 3 March 2026; the Saxo founder kept about 28 percent.

The bank has also faced a criminal case in Switzerland. On 22 August 2025 the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland announced that a penalty order had found Bank J. Safra Sarasin AG guilty of failing, between November 2011 and May 2014, to take the organisational measures needed against aggravated money laundering, in connection with the Brazilian corruption affair known as “Lava Jato” involving the state oil company Petrobras. The bank was fined; the parties did not contest the order, which became final.

For a design guide, Bank J. Safra Sarasin shows a name built in layers: a Basel house from 1841, a partnership name from 1900 and a new owner’s family name added in 2013; compare EFG International, another Swiss private bank shaped by a takeover, and UBS. For this guide we use a deep green, ink and pale sage with an old-gold accent and a classical serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Bank J. Safra Sarasin’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.