Plus - This isn't really huge news, and the reputation of Swiss bank secrecy is a little outdated - e.g. The US and Swiss authorities have been co-operating around Tax information for some time. Similarly, it's still incumbent on the Swiss to track and act on illegal flows of money (and they do).... It's still far from transparent, but it's not the citadel that some people think.
The main reason for this major change is that even in the presence of information-sharing provisions of treaties, Switzerland refused to provide any information on most account holders that were evading US (or other countries') taxes, on the rationale that evading non-Swiss tax was not a criminal offense in Switzerland. Cooperation was virtually nil, especially in the tax arena.
Depending on the scope of the changes, this could be huge news.
