Make it or break it - the tasks facing Sergio Ermotti, Thomas Jordan and Karin Keller-Suter

Switzerland's financial centre has been shaken to its foundations by the collapse of Credit Suisse and the subsequent shotgun marriage between CS and UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, arranged by Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller Sutter and Swiss National Bank (SNB) Governor Thomas Jordan.

The demise of CS is the end of the symbiosis between the small country and its two global financial giants.

The new UBSplus will have to shrink the global investment banking of CS and liquidate CS as a counterparty of the global SIFIs and shadow banks.

As far as domestic business is concerned, Ermotti can take the best parts for himself and sell the rest to other Swiss banking groups such as Raiffeisen or the cantonal banks.

This may work, as it will be done under the protection of the SNB's CHF 250bn liquidity backstop facility, a further CHF 9bn special state facility for UBS to cover hanging CS problems, plus a de facto promise by the Swiss government to do whatever it takes to get out of the crisis.

In political terms, the Swiss Ministry of Finance and the SNB have been privatised in the interests of UBSplus.

This leaves Finance Minister Keller-Suter and SNB Governor Jordan, as the public custodians of the Swiss financial centre, in an awkward position.

Ermotti's UBSplus will continue to be deeply rooted in dollar-based global financial capitalism of the Anglo-American variety.

A system that is being challenged by an emerging alternative, multipolar, multi-currency, politically centered around China and Russia.

The institutions of this alternative are here, the technology is second to none and the petrodollars and petrorubles are beginning to flow.

But largely without Swiss banks.

Will Keller-Suter and Jordan do something to change that? Or won't they?

Will they opt for a neutral financial centre as an interface for a future multi-polar, multi-currency system, or a small financial centre within a shrunken Anglo-American system?

The choice they make is going to be crucial, not only for Switzerland's financial sector, but for the Swiss economy as a whole.