SNB & CHF

Das Eidgenössische Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung WBF hat eine Änderung des Anhangs 3 der Verordnung vom 27. August 2014 über Massnahmen zur Vermeidung der Umgehung internationaler Sanktionen im Zusammenhang mit der Situation in der Ukraine (SR 946.231.176.72) publiziert. Am 14. Oktober 2020 hat das Eidgenössische Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung WBF die Liste der in diesem Kontext sanktionierten Personen, Unternehmen und...

Donald Trump’s poll numbers were looking increasingly unhealthy at the time of writing, but at least the cocktail of drugs administered to the coronavirus-stricken President appears to have worked. This is encouraging news in the fight against the virus and a considerable achievement for Regeneron, whose founders increased their stake in the company after a French pharma group pulled back earlier this year. At this point, markets are increasingly taking on board...

© Anton Anton | Dreamstime.com In parts of Switzerland contact tracers can no longer cope with the rising numbers of cases, according the newspaper SonntagsZeitung. Contact tracers have the task of identifying who has been in contact with people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, contacting those people and requesting they test and self isolate in order to break chains of infection. The tracing team working for the canton of Zurich is so overloaded it is delegating its...

Former Credit Suisse boss Tidjane Thiam apparently never felt at home in Switzerland. After losing a power struggle with Chairman Urs Rohner, he left the bank in February. © Keystone / Walter Bieri A recent story from the New York Times implied that the resignation of Ivory Coast-born Tidjane Thiam at the helm of Credit Suisse earlier this year had racist undertones, and he was the only Black CEO among the world’s biggest banks. How does the banking world –...

Former CONMEBOL presidents Juan Angel Napout (left) and Nicolas Leoz in December 2014. Napout was arrested in 2015 in a pre-dawn raid at a Swiss luxury hotel as part of the US Department of Justice’s widening bribery case into FIFA. In May 2014, Leoz was indicted along with 14 other football officials by the US Department of State on charges of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. Swiss criminal proceedings against Leoz were abandoned after his death in August...

Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured. When times are good, modest reforms are all that’s needed to maintain the ship’s course. By “good times,” I mean eras of rising prosperity which generate bigger budgets, profits, tax revenues, paychecks, etc., eras characterized by high levels of stability and predictability. Since stability has been the norm for 75 years, institutions and conventional thinking have both been...

Politicians have destroyed more than 13 million jobs this year in a deluge of edicts aimed to fight the covid-19 pandemic. More than two hundred thousand Americans still died from the coronavirus, but the anticovid government crackdowns probably did far more damage than the virus. The covid crisis has also shown how easy it is for politicians to fan fears to seize nearly absolute power. In March, Donald Trump proclaimed that “we are at war with an invisible enemy.”...

Swiss Franc The Euro has stable by 0.00% to 1.0733 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, October 15(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: A combination of the surging virus, threatening the slow recovery that was already losing momentum, the lack of new stimulus in the US, and market positioning is seeing risk unwind in a big way today. Equities are selling off. Led by a 2% drop in Hong Kong, Asia Pacific equities...

The Producer Price Index (PPI) or officially named “Producer and Import Price Index” describes the changes in prices for producers and importers. For us it is interesting because it is used in the formula for the Real Effective Exchange Rate. When producers and importers profit on lower price changes when compared to other countries, then the Swiss Franc reduces its overvaluation. The Swiss PPI values of -6% in 2015 (see below), compared to -3% in Europe or -1% in...

© Xantana | Dreamstime.com On 14 October 2020, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) reported 2,823 new cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection over 24 hours, a record number. In addition, FOPH reported 57 new Covid-19 hospital admissions and a further 8 deaths. When the FOPH receives test data it assigns each reported positive test to the day when the test was conducted. Because of reporting delays, most positive cases reported on any given day will be allocated to days...