THIS is the opportunity of a lifetime to hire more private bankers, says Alex Widmer, chief executive of Bank Julius Baer, part of Switzerland's third-biggest banking group. Baer added 49 bankers to its ranks in the first six months of the year, most of them snatched from UBS and Credit Suisse, its bigger, credit-crunched rivals. It plans to add as many as 60 more this year. Sarasin & Cie, another Swiss bank, is on a similar hiring spree.

Such expansionism may look rather brave, given recent attacks from American and German tax authorities on private-banking practices. On July 17th a Senate subcommittee raked through allegations that two particular banks, LGT Bank of Liechtenstein and UBS, had helped wealthy Americans to evade taxes. A contrite UBS witness said that since November the bank had stopped sending its private bankers from Switzerland to America to advise American taxpayers. The risk of their infringing regulations on what they may or may not sell was judged too great. “I hope that other Swiss banks will take notice,” said the committee's chairman.

They may well. The bigger Swiss banks have the option of serving their clients onshore: UBS has more than 32,000 employees in America. For other Swiss banks it is possible and legal to deal with American taxpayers as a “qualified intermediary”, but the rules are complex. Baer gave up the struggle in 2005 and sold its American operation—to UBS.

But the model of Swiss banking secrecy—Mr Widmer calls it “client confidentiality”—still has plenty of life in it. Since July 2005, Swiss banks have levied tax on behalf of European Union governments on interest-related income earned by their countries' taxpayers with accounts held in Switzerland. But the revenue is puny, around SFr500m ($480m) so far, and the directive covers only bonds and deposits. It can be sidestepped by bundling the assets into a fund or by booking them at an offshore centre outside Europe. The real growth areas for private banking are in any case farther afield, in Asia and eastern Europe. A new Baer office in Jakarta will be followed by others in Cairo and Istanbul.

The smaller banks have a particular incentive to fight for the model. Michel Habib, a professor of banking at Zurich University, has calculated the value of bank secrecy from the impact of news that it might be abolished on the share price of listed Swiss banks. Answer: 8-13% of their market capitalisation for the smaller banks, but very little for UBS or Credit Suisse (which on July 24th reported decent results and is also hiring staff). Swiss banking secrecy has been under pressure for 15 years and will come under more, says Mr Widmer, but the model is sound. Polls suggest that 81% of the Swiss oppose abolition. Whatever the Americans say.