At the beginning of the Expo in 1996, the Direction Finances (DF) was one of the driving forces and took a central position, especially in the organisation. The activities of the Direction Finances at that time corresponded to the profile of the first Directeur Finances of Expo.01, Rudolf Burkhalter, and went far beyond the scope of finances in the strict sense. They included, among other things, procedures, the environment and transport and, in a later phase, the preparation of the various areas of the future Direction Exploitation.

The financial concept was based on an organisation into profit centres. All of Expo's activities at the time were grouped into about forty profit centres. The managers of the profit centres were obliged to keep their internal budget in balance. The concept was based on the principles of the then modern New Public Management. In relation to the organisation as a whole, controlling worked in a rather detached and reactive way and could not intervene in an anticipatory way. In the summer of 1999, there was a lack of sponsors, and the doubling of building costs as a result of the architectural competition ultimately led to the failure of the profit centre philosophy. Massively increased constraints demotivated the heads of the profit centres or caused them, as well as the Direction Générale, to overestimate the potential income.

The Direction Finances was restructured during the transition from Expo.01 to Expo.02. After the departure of Rudolf Burkhalter, Rolf Dörig took over ad interim as head of the Direction Finances during the phase of revising the budget and reassessing the financial framework.

The management
Walter Häusermann, Directeur Finances (02.02.2000-31.12.2002)
Rolf Dörig, Directeur Finances ad interim (04.11.1999-19.01.2000) 
Rudolf Burkhalter, Directeur Finances (21.03.1997-27.09.1999)

Yves Pellouchoud, adjoint (finances et contrôle de gestion)

The heads of department
Olivier Caillet (développement informatique)
Calin Constatinescu (liquidités)
Corinne Gilg (secrétariat et uniformes)
Clara Henriques (comptabilité)
Thomas Madoery (contrôle de gestion)
Sylvie Raffeneau (personnel)
Philippe Rapo (services généraux)
Rose-Marie Sigrist (gestion des contrats)
Yann Smith (coordination du contrôle des coûts de construction)
Quang Than Dao (services et développement informatiques)

The staff
Salvatore Agri, Bertrand Arnd, Amandine Berger, Clara Blanck-Aravecchia, Françoise Boss, Christian Budry, Valérie Caneda-Duvoisin, Michel Chaker, Antonio de Carvalho, Sofia Dos Santos, Karima Douh, Michèle Dubois, Valérie Dufour, Edy Gianora, Mark Grünig, Daniel Laubscher, Alessandro Maggioni, Alexandra Montandon, Chris Mourey, Daniel Ramos, Eric Rosselet, Yves Rubin, Karin Stemm Jerot, Renata Tezacki Häusermann, Joanie Waelti 

^{Photos: are still missing - send us yours! expo.02(at)ex-expo.ch}