The Swiss government, several Swiss billionaires and 15 of the country's biggest companies yesterday threw their weight behind a rescue plan to try to rebuild a Swiss national airline out of the remnants of Swissair.

The success of the SFr4 billion (€2.7 billion) rescue plan, known as Phoenix Plus, hung in the balance right until the last moment with the government unwilling to back the biggest corporate bailout in the country's history without a similar sized contribution from the private sector.

Business leaders led by Mr Rainer Gut, chairman of Nestle, the world's biggest consumer food company, and Mr Marcel Ospel, chairman of UBS, the country's biggest bank, spent the morning drumming up last-minute private sector contributions to save the 70-year-old flag carrier.

Swisscom, the country's telecoms company, has promised to contribute up to SFr100 million , and the list of other corporate contributors includes Nestle, Hoffmann-La Roche, Novartis, Swiss Life, Zurich Insurance, Kudelski, Ciba Specialty Chemicals and Swiss Re.

Mr Walter Haefner, one of Switzerland's wealthiest individuals, has been joined by Mr Thomas Schmidheiny, a former Swissair director whose family controls Holcim, and Bertarelli et Cie, the private company of Mr Ernesto Bertarelli, the young chief executive of Serono, Europe's biggest biotech company.

In total, the public and private sectors are respectively contributing SFr1.1 billion and SFr1.9 billion to a recapitalisation of Crossair, the regional Swiss airline which will take over two-thirds of Swissair's fleet.

The Swiss Federal government will take 20 per cent in Crossair, and several other Swiss cantons will take 18 per cent of the new airline. In addition, the Swiss government will provide SFr1.1 billion to keep Swissair's long-haul jets flying until they can be transferred to the new airline next spring.