At 4pm yesterday , Philipp Hildebrand, the suave, multilingual chairman of the Swiss National Bank, was due to face questions from members of parliament.
The meeting in Bern was expected to be tough but manageable. Over the weekend, Switzerland’s ultranationalist People’s party had maintained its demands for Mr Hildebrand’s resignation, following accusations of insider trading publis-hed by a magazine closely associated with the party.
But cracks emerged in the magazine’s depiction, and he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the SNB. On Thursday Mr Hildebrand defended himself convincingly at his first public news conference after the allegations, helping to bring virtually all Switzerland’s political parties and the government behind him.