Tag Archive: Business

New Gold Pool at the BIS Switzerland: A Who’s Who of Central Bankers

2017-06-13

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2017-06-13

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Headquarters
A central bank Gold Pool which many people will be familiar with operated in the gold market between November 1961 and March 1968. That Gold Pool was known as the London Gold Pool.

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Bombardier to downsize Swiss operations

2017-06-13

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2017-06-13

Canadian plane-maker Bombardier will cut about 650 jobs in Switzerland by the end of 2018, the largest Swiss trade union said on Thursday. The job cuts, which include almost 500 temporary postings, will come from Bombardier facilities in Villeneuve and Zurich, Unia announcedexternal link on its website. That would remove well more than half of the company’s employees in Switzerland.

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Is the Central Bank’s Rigged Stock Market Ready to Crash on Schedule?

2017-06-12

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2017-06-12

We just saw a major rift open in the US stock market that we haven’t seen since the dot-com bust in 1999. While the Dow rose by almost half a percent to a new all-time high, the NASDAQ, because it is heavier tech stocks, plunged almost 2%.

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Renewed debate over banking laws for expats

2017-06-12

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2017-06-12

New efforts are underway in parliament to ensure that the Swiss abroad can keep banking and other aspects of a financial life in Switzerland. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, an increasing number of Swiss citizens in other countries have been experiencing trouble keeping a bank account in Switzerland, especially if they reside in the United States.

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Biking still faces uphill battle in Switzerland

2017-06-11

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2017-06-11

As the bicycle celebrates its 200th year, advocacy group Pro Velo Switzerland says there is still a lot of unfulfilled potential when it comes to Switzerland’s use of the two-wheeled mode of transport.On June 12, 1817, a German aristocrat named Karl Drais rode 14 kilometres (8.7 miles) on pedal-less wooden beam with two wheels of his own invention.

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Few tenants take advantage of rent controls

2017-06-10

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2017-06-10

Anyone who rents a home in Switzerland (more than 60% of households) could qualify for a rent reduction after the Federal Housing Office reduced the reference rate on June 1. However, not everyone bothers to ask, and not all those who do get a positive response from landlords.

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World’s longest railway tunnel victim of own success

2017-06-09

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2017-06-09

Almost 10,000 passengers and around 67,000 tonnes of freight pass through the 57-kilometre-long Gotthard Base Tunnel each day. Opened a year ago on June 1, the Gotthard's success is putting the structure to the test.

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Negative Rates: The New Gold Rush… For Gold Vaults

2017-06-09

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2017-06-09

Negative interest rates and the populist uprising that spurred the UK to vote for Brexit and Americans to elect Trump has helped reignite a rush into physical safe haven assets like gold and silver, which however has led to a shortage of safe venues where to store the precious metals (unlike bitcoin, gold actually has a physical dimension).

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Giant carbon-sucking commercial plant launches in Zurich

2017-06-07

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2017-06-07

The world’s first commercial plant to extract carbon dioxide at industrial scale from the air and sell it directly to a buyer opened near Zurich on Wednesday. The machine pipes the gas to a nearby greenhouse to help grow vegetables. The Swiss firm Climeworks external linkturned on the so-called ‘Direct Air Capture (DAC)’ plant in the farming village of Hinwil, Switzerland. The plant aims to supply 900 tonnes of CO2 annually to a nearby greenhouse...

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Switzerland remains competitive despite issues

2017-06-04

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2017-06-04

The strong franc and corporate tax uncertainty have failed to dislodge Switzerland from second place in an annual ranking of the world’s most competitive economies. The alpine state was also judged by the Lausanne-based IMD business school to have the world’s eighth best digital capability. For the second year in a row, Switzerland was only outclassed by Hong Kong in the 2017 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbookexternal link, released on Wednesday.

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Swiss farmers reject palm oil cow supplements

2017-06-03

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2017-06-03

The Swiss Farmers’ Association has called on members to stop feeding dairy cows supplements that contain palm oil. The revelation has embarrassed the organisation that has been fighting against palm oil imports from Asia.

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The Internet Helped Kill Inflation In America, Says Credit Suisse

2017-06-02

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2017-06-02

Burkhard Varnhlot
Whether or not San Francisco Fed President John Williams is right about US inflation and employment being about as close to the central bank’s targets as investors have seen - as he told CNBC two days ago - is irrelevant: The central bank is going to raise interest rates two more times this year no matter what happens to consumer prices, says Credit Suisse Chief Investment Officer for Switzerland Burkhard Varnholt.

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Record research spending defies currency woes

2017-06-01

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2017-06-01

Swiss companies invested record volumes in research and development (R&D) in 2015, despite the franc exploding in value at the start of that year. The private sector was responsible for most of the CHF22 billion ($22.6 billion) R&D spending in 2015, according to official figures released on Monday. This was an increase of 10.5% from the last time such spending was measured by the Federal Statistical Officeexternal link in 2012.

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Strong franc scares off investment in Switzerland

2017-05-30

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2017-05-30

The strong franc continues to scare off foreign investors to Switzerland, while at the same time driving Swiss manufacturing abroad. These are the findings of the latest annual Ernst & Young foreign direct investment (FDI) survey released on Friday.

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Swiss farmers expect meagre fruit harvest after losses

2017-05-30

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2017-05-30

An unusual end-of-April frost is expected to cost Swiss fruit producers some CHF100 million ($102 million) in damages and as much as three-quarters of their crop this year.

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Swiss mobile providers perform well

2017-05-28

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2017-05-28

Speed, availability, network responsiveness: on all counts, the mobile experience in Switzerland is “an excellent one”, according to a new report. But improvements could still be made to advance on the leader board. This is the verdict published Wednesday May 24 by OpenSignal, a London-based private held company that issues industry reports based on crowdsourced data from worldwide users of its OpenSignal app.

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New LafargeHolcim CEO given market approval

2017-05-27

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2017-05-27

The markets have welcomed LafargeHolcim’s choice of chief executive to guide the company out of a reputational hole. Jan Jenisch, who will take over in October, has experienced difficult situations having spent the last two and a half years driving up Sika’s results against the backdrop of a shareholder civil war.

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Bern train station to expand to meet growing rail traffic

2017-05-25

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2017-05-25

Bern railway station, Switzerland’s second busiest after Zurich, is set to expand with the creation of a new underground rail station serving regional trains between Bern and Solothurn. A pedestrian access area is also planned.Some 202,000 passengers pass through Bern’s main train station – the second largest in Switzerland – every working day of the week.

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Novartis to shed 500 jobs in Basel

2017-05-24

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2017-05-24

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has announced that it plans to cut 500 jobs at its Basel headquarters in Switzerland over the next 18 months. It says it will also create 350 new posts, mostly in its biotech business. Novartis said in a statement on Thursday that it planned to cut up to 500 jobs in the Basel area or to relocate workers to other sites over the next 18 months.

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Swiss agriculture under fire at WTO

2017-05-23

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2017-05-23

The European Union and the United States have criticised Switzerland for the over-protection of its agricultural sector. Responding to the questions raised at the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), Switzerland said it would make an effort to ease protections, on condition that other member states do likewise.

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