GENEVA, Switzerland?After relentless international pressure on Swiss banking secrecy, history came full circle last week when Germany decided to use stolen bank data to corner taxpayers with money hidden in Switzerland.

Weary Swiss bankers tried to contain another onslaught that shook the remnants of the lucrative wall of secrecy they have been struggling to maintain against Europe and the United States.

However, their minds were increasingly set on growing business with Asia and emerging markets.

"Banking secrecy is being called into question," admitted the secretary general of the Swiss Private Bankers Association, Michel Derobert.

"It is important for past clientele, and it's losing its importance for the clients of the future," he said.

Swiss banks were legally sworn to secrecy over their clients' affairs in 1934, as a wave of espionage by Germany's then Nazi regime against Germans?including Jews and political opponents?with deposits in Switzerland added to other tensions of the era.

Although nobody in Switzerland is making comparisons with 1930s Europe, an anonymous whistleblower's recent offer to German authorities?thought to be the third leak in two years?annoyed the banking establishment and fuelled domestic doubts about the value of secrecy.

The Swiss Bankers' Association condemned the German decision, claiming that Germany was turning into "a receiver of stolen goods" and testing good neighborly relations.

"It's part of their strategy not to name the bank, to keep people worried," said James Nason, a spokesman for the association.

At least one bank in Zurich reportedly faced a flurry of calls from German customers.

Germany has been in the forefront of European pressure on Switzerland to counter tax evasion in recent years.

That was followed by the G20 group of leading economies last year, which forced the Swiss to water down secrecy and bolster cooperation.

"Banking secrecy no longer has a future. It has run its course," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the Saturday edition of Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

"It is obviously not an easy decision for Switzerland. Banking secrecy is a part of its state tradition," he said. "But international cooperation changes national traditions. Switzerland finds itself in this process of change."

Whistleblowers have amplified the pressure.

Information from a former UBS banker arrested in 2008 formed the backbone of multi-million dollar US government litigation last year that obliged the Swiss bank to hand over details on some 4,500 suspected tax dodging US offshore clients.

And last month, Swiss and French ministers smoothed over a spat over French use of data taken from the Geneva private banking subsidiary of global giant HSBC by a former employee.

"It's embarrassing and painful if you have cases like that but out of 330 banks it's just three cases in two years," Nason said.

Experts nonetheless highlighted the harm for the reputation of Swiss banking and the psychological value of the bank secrecy banner.

"This component is pretty well the most important one," tax lawyer Philippe Kenel said. "Whether the rumors are true or not, it's clear that trust is affected."

The German case has also fuelled an expanding array of skeptics across the political spectrum in Switzerland, while Swiss Finance Minister Hans Rudolf Merz steered clear of mentioning sanctions with a "trusted" neighbor?unlike with France over HSBC.

And while Merz insisted that the Swiss would not be helping any German tax probes based on the stolen data, he underlined that "the German government is free to use acquired data inside its own country."

"It is not in the interest of Switzerland to attract undeclared foreign funds," he said.

The overall cost of dents in secrecy is hard to pin down.

"It's impossible to put a price on it, it's like one of four wheels on a car," Nason said.

The SBA says more than half of securities in Swiss banks are foreign held, but just 17.5 percent in recent years belonged to foreign private clients while the bulk came from institutional investors with little concern for secrecy.

Eric Jondeau, of the Swiss Institute for Banking and Finance, estimated that losses in wealth management?where Swiss banking is ranked third in the world?should not exceed $5 billion, out of hundreds of billions of foreign assets.

But Dutch authorities alone said that of the 2.2 billion euros declared during a recent tax amnesty, most was stashed away in accounts in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.

The Swiss banking establishment also highlights new business with emerging markets and Asia, and a smaller role for Europe.

The country's biggest private bank, exclusively serving wealthy clients, Julius Baer on Friday noted an increase in new money and deposits last year, with "continued strong inflows from emerging markets and in particular Asia."

"The big potential of the future is Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and above all Asia," Kenel said.