Three hundred staff at the Geneva branch of the Swiss bank UBS were evacuated for three hours Tuesday as bomb disposal squads with sniffer dogs searched the building following an alert, police said.
Geneva police received an anonymous telephone call shortly after 10 am warning that a bomb would go off in the building in the centre of town.
Police said exhaustive searches had not revealed any suspicious object.
A key meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was in progress in Geneva, but Geneva police spokesman Christophe Zawadski said there was no evidence of a connection with the bomb alert.
"At 10:10 am (0810 GMT) police received a call informing us that a bomb had been placed in the building at 8 Rue du Rhone, which houses UBS," Zawadski said.
Police cordoned off a side street next to the bank building on the city's main shopping street near the shores of Lake Geneva.
Bank spokesman Rudolf Burgin dismissed any suggestion of a connection between the threat and a recent decision by UBS to withdraw its investment in Valiance Fiduciaire, France's largest security transport firm guarding money and other valuables.
The French company is in the process of filing for bankruptcy.
A possible link with the WTO meeting was a more reasonable explanation, the spokesman said.
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