Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland.Credit Suisse's founder, Alfred Escher, was called "the spiritual father of the railway law of 1852", for his work defeating the idea of a state-run railway system in Switzerland in favor of privatization. Escher founded Credit Suisse (originally called the Swiss Credit Institution, i.e., Schweizerische Kreditanstalt) jointly with Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt in 1856 primarily to provide domestic funding to railway projects, avoiding French banks that wanted to exert influence over the railway system.