le News

20 Minutes. While a recent job advertisement placed in a Swiss newspaper is not specific on gender, it makes it very clear that it doesn’t want anyone over the age of 50, or under the age of 25. The advertisement was placed by an organisation called Bureau des Métiers in Sion. The offending advert is also on the company’s website and can be viewed here. © Joserpizarro | Dreamstime.com According to 20 Minutes, who published the story, the practice is not illegal. Legal or not, some local...

20 Minutes. While a recent job advertisement placed in a Swiss newspaper is not specific on gender, it makes it very clear that it doesn’t want anyone over the age of 50, or under the age of 25. The advertisement was placed by an organisation called Bureau des Métiers in Sion. The offending advert is also on the company’s website and can be viewed here. © Joserpizarro | Dreamstime.com According to 20 Minutes, who published the story, the practice is not illegal. Legal or not, some local...

The Swiss National Bank is the process of issuing new bank notes. A new 50 franc note hit the streets last year. Now it is the new 20 franc note’s turn. Officially launched today, it will enter circulation on 17 May 2017. A photograph of the note was posted on Facebook by Bilan: The new red note, designed around the theme of light, has a few secrets. It can be be washed without losing any of its colour, so you don’t need to worry about leaving it in your pocket. Apparently it can even...

The Swiss National Bank is the process of issuing new bank notes. A new 50 franc note hit the streets last year. Now it is the new 20 franc note’s turn. Officially launched today, it will enter circulation on 17 May 2017. A photograph of the note was posted on Facebook by Bilan: The new red note, designed around the theme of light, has a few secrets. It can be be washed without losing any of its colour, so you don’t need to worry about leaving it in your pocket. Apparently it can even...

Figures published on 9 May 2017 by SECO, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, show a fall in the number of unemployed in Switzerland. © 72soul | Dreamstime.com At the end of April 2017, there were 146,330 people registered as unemployed, 5,950 fewer than the month before, reducing the rate of unemployment from 3.4% to 3.3%. Unemployment across the French and Italian speaking regions averaged 4.3%, materially higher than in German speaking Switzerland where the rate was 2.9%. The...

Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) statistics show a decline in Swiss wine consumption in 2016. Swiss residents consumed less rosé, less white and less red wine. Lavaux Switzerland – © minnystock | Dreamstime.com Total consumption in 2016 was 253 million litres, down from 262 million litres in 2015, a drop of 4%. This follows drops of 2% in 2014 and 1% in 2015, a total decline of nearly 7% over three years. The 2016 figure equates to 40 bottles per resident. When those 19 years old...

20 Minutes. On Friday, Easyjet added a 14th aircraft to its Geneva-based fleet. The new Airbus A320 will allow it to add new destinations. © Tommy Beattie | Dreamstime.com The new aircraft will create 36 new jobs on top of the current 500 at the airline’s Geneva base, Thomas Haagensen, Easyjet’s director of northern Europe, told Le Matin Dimanche. Last year, the airline flew 900,000 more people from Switzerland than it did in 2015. Part of the growth is due to the progressive replacement of...

The following is an excerpt from David Enrich's nonfiction financial and legal thriller The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History.  (Read part of the prologue here; another excerpt can be found here) This excerpt takes place shortly after the accused mastermind of the Libor scandal, Tom Hayes, is fired from his job at Citigroup, kicking government investigations into interest-rate-rigging into a...

Every year Deutsche Bank releases its fascinating index of real-time prices around the world which looks at the cost of goods and services from a purchase-price parity basis, to determine the most expensive - and in this year's edition, best - cities. As have done on several occasions in the past, we traditionally focus on one specific subindex: the cost of "cheap dates" in the world's top cities. The index consists of i) cab rides, ii) dinner/lunch for two at a pub or diner, iii) soft...

24 Heures. Last week, the regional newspaper 24 Heures, uncovered a fraudulent scheme allegedly involving two workers from the union Unia, which may have cost Vaud’s social security system as much as CHF 3 million. © Steve Woods | Dreamstime.com The alleged fraud is centred on the construction industry, where bosses of small businesses along with two staff from the union Unia managed to deceive the canton’s unemployment fund. According to an ongoing criminal enquiry, around CHF 3 million was...