SNB & CHF

Best of neighbours: the HQs of UBS and Credit Suisse in Zurich. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) Switzerland’s two largest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, have asked shareholders to accept a delay of several months for half of their dividend payments this year. The move follows a request from the financial regulator to hold on to more cash during the coronavirus pandemic. Both banks now want to split the distribution of dividends, each worth hundreds of millions of francs,...

Danica reading to her teachers during the pandemic

„Ich glaube, dass einige Kommentatoren die Strenge der eingeführten Massnahmen (Einführung der Negativzinsen, Anmerkung des Autors) noch nicht ganz begriffen haben (…).“ „Sollten die Massnahmen nicht den gewünschten Erfolg zeigen, liessen sie sich auch verschärfen (…).“ Und: „Wir werden den Mindestkurs weiterhin mit aller Konsequenz durchzusetzen.“ Das waren die Worte von SNB-Chef Thomas Jordan bei der Einführung der Negativzinsen, kurz vor der Abschaffung des...

Workshops and studios for textile design, object design, jewellery design and graphic design are eligible for emergency funding (Keystone) People who work in the cultural sector in Switzerland can now apply for funds to cushion the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Swiss government last month adopted a package of measures totalling CHF280 million ($287 million). On Monday the Federal Office of Culture explainedexternal link how the money is to be divided up:...

By Dara O’Sullivan, Derrick Leonard, and Ilan Solot With many markets still under lockdown and some going out on Easter holidays this week, we continue to see amended trading hours. The most notable change has been in India with a reduction in trading hours, while in Nigeria we saw a small amount of liquidity being released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Below are our updates for the week. Please get in touch if you would like further information or to discuss...

In response to the coronavirus, central banks worldwide are currently pumping massive amounts of money. This pumping, it is held, is going to arrest the negative economic side effects that the virus-related panic inflicts on economies. As appealing as it sounds we suggest that this view is erroneous. The view that more money can revive an economy is based on the belief that money transmits its effect through aggregate expenditure. With more money in their pockets,...

About 2.9 million people die in the United States each year from all causes. Monthly this total ranges from around 220,000 in the summertime to more than 280,000 in winter. In recent decades, flu season has often peaked sometime from January to March, and this is a major driver in total deaths. The average daily number of deaths from December through March is over eight thousand. So far, total death data is too preliminary to know if there has been any significant...

USD/CHF traded with a positive bias for the sixth consecutive session on Monday. Bulls are likely to wait for a sustained move beyond the very important 200-DMA. The USD/CHF pair built on last week’s goodish positive move of around 300 pips and continued gaining traction for the sixth straight session on Monday. The pair climbed to near two-week tops in the last hour, with bulls now looking to extend the momentum further beyond the 0.9800 round-figure mark. The...

Gegenüber dem Schweizer Franken notiert der Euro mit 1,0556 ebenfalls wenig verändert. Und der Dollar kostet 0,9777 Franken. Derweil interveniert die Schweizerische Nationalbank (SNB) wohl weiterhin am Devisenmarkt. Denn die erneut kräftige Zunahme der Sichtguthaben – diese Woche um 6,7 Milliarden nach 11,7 Milliarden in der Vorwoche – deutet daraufhin, dass sich die SNB auch in der vergangenen Woche gegen die Aufwertung des Frankens gestemmt hat. An den...