Swiss Business Hub Canada

Swiss Business Hub Canada is the Canadian office of Switzerland's official export and investment promotion system. It represents Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE), a private consulting and platform organisation mandated by the Swiss Confederation — by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs since 1927 for export promotion, and by SECO and all the cantons since 2008 for investment promotion. S-GE runs about 200 staff in some 25 countries through its own teams, the Swiss Business Hubs, which sit inside Swiss diplomatic missions; the Canadian hub is based at the Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal and works alongside the Swiss embassy in Ottawa. On the TechTO stage in July 2023, senior investment advisor Bill Edwards explained the job by analogy: think of Canada's Trade Commissioner Service, he said, and this is the Swiss version — helping Canadian companies make informed decisions when they look at Europe for expansion, and making the introductions. He appeared with Andrew Leaman of Longan Vision Corp, a Canadian firm building an augmented-reality and thermal-imaging system for firefighters, who described what the hub had actually done: introductions to cantonal economic development agencies, accelerators and startup centres that turned into ten days of meetings, after his own cold outreach had gone unanswered. Edwards named artificial intelligence, fintech, personalised health, robotics and advanced manufacturing as the sectors Switzerland is focused on.