Geneva’s financial community can breathe easy with the knowledge that Edouard Stern’s killer has been arrested and faces charges of murderin...

Geneva’s financial community can breathe easy with the knowledge that Edouard Stern’s killer has been arrested and faces charges of murdering the French banker and local resident. The confession last week by Cecile Brossard, 36, daughter of a Paris advertising executive, that she shot dead Mr Stern, 50, in his bedroom at his Geneva flat has been greeted with relief in the Swiss financial centre. Mr Stern’s body was discovered two weeks ago in a head-to-toe latex catsuit and four bullet wounds, including two in his head. At the time, the murder had prompted speculation about a professional hit by rivals or gangsters. “At this stage of the investigation, I am not ruling out the theory that the crime was carried out on someone’s orders,” said the judge involved in prosecuting the case earlier this week. “The crime might have been committed for financial or personal reasons. There was a dispute over the sum of $1 million.” Mme Brossard, who lived with a Swiss practitioner of alternative medicine in a luxurious lakeside apartment building, used the name “Alice” when playing her role as a sado-masochistic dominatrix, according to reports in the local press. French police reported that she had worked in the 1990s as one of the call-girls employed by Margaret Macdonald, the “English Madam”, who was sentenced to four years’ jail in Paris last year.