SNB & CHF

While all of the banks playing “pass the hot potato” with Archegos Capital’s now-dismantled equity book are undoubtedly still assessing the damage they incurred (or at least will report to shareholders), it looks like no one had it worse than Credit Suisse. The banking giant has now slashed its bonus pool by “hundreds of millions of dollars” according to FT, after the firm lost $4.7 billion in the Archegos implosion. Credit Suisse is Switzerland’s second biggest...

Digital bank Swissquote is expanding its crypto business by delving into the new world of blockchain-compliant digital assets. It appears that they are not alone: several high street banks also plan to launch “tokenization” services. Swissquote is teaming up with digital assets service provider Taurus to allow clients to issue and invest in tokenized assets. Blockchain – or other distributed ledger technology systems – promises to simplify the process of creating a...

M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity is on the rise, as companies coming out of the pandemic with strong balance sheets shop for buying opportunities. Last week ACS, a Spanish construction group, approached Italian transport company Atlantia to buy Italy’s largest motorway network. Two big funds are also eyeing Dutch telecommunications company KPN as a potential acquisition target. M&A is one of our 2021 investment themes and we like event-driven hedge...

Bars and restaurants in Switzerland have been closed since Christmas and there are growing calls to allow outdoor dining. Keystone/Martial Trezzini Pressure is building on the Swiss government to ease restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises on Monday called for a review of the current situation, saying the government was focusing too much on health while failing to consider the economic...

La verità, vi prego, sul neo-liberismo: Il poco che c’è, il tanto che manca (The truth, please, on neoliberalism) There are few things nowadays that ignite more hatred, especially within university campuses, than declaring oneself to be a neoliberal (if the reader is not convinced, he is invited to try it himself and see what happens). Both exponents from the Right and from the Left, in fact, view neoliberalism as the instrumentum regni with which global political...

The lesson of China’s Cultural Revolution in my view is that once the lid blows off, everything that was linear (predictable) goes non-linear (unpredictable). There is a whiff of unease in the air as beneath the cheery veneer of free money for almost everyone, inequality and polarization are rapidly consuming what’s left of common ground in America. Though there are many systemic differences between China and the U.S., humans in every nation are all still running...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.07% to 1.0997 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, April 12(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: Risk appetites have not returned from the weekend. Equities are heavy, and bond yields softer. The dollar is drifting lower in Europe. China’s unusually candid admission of the shortcomings of its vaccine and record new cases in India saw all the equity markets in the region fall. Only...

Grundsätzlich herrscht, abseits von Kreisen eingefleischter Marxisten, weitgehend Einigkeit darüber, dass der Wettbewerb zwischen den Anbietern von Waren und Dienstleistungen Kreativität freisetzt, Innovationen fördert, die Produktivität steigert und die Preise für die Konsumenten senkt. Ohne Wettbewerb bedeutet der Trabant den Gipfel der Automobilentwicklung; unter Wettbewerbsbedingungen entsteht der S-Klasse-Mercedes. Beides probiert – kein Vergleich. Um den...

The answer to the question, “What should I do to my portfolio today (this week, this month)? is almost always nothing. Humans, and especially portfolio managers, have a hard time believing that doing nothing is the right response….to anything…or nothing. We are programmed to believe that success comes from doing things, not not doing things. And so, often we look at markets on a day to day or week to week basis and think something of significance happened and we...

Senso consists of a screen and a floor panel that measures steps, weight displacement and balance as users attempt to complete a sequence of movements shown on the screen. Dividat AG Elderly participants who trained regularly on a fitness device developed by a Swiss company showed improvements in cognitive skills, such as attention, concentration, memory and orientation. The study, carried out by an international team in two Belgian care homes, relied on a fitness...