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. escher aimed to start the company with three million shares and instead sold 218 million shares in three days. the bank was modeled after crédit mobilier, a bank funding railway projects in france that was founded two years prior, except credit suisse had a more conservative lending policy focused on short-to-medium term loans. in its first year of operation, 25 percent of the bank's revenues was from the swiss northeastern railway, which was being built by escher's company, nordostbahn.