Tag Archives: 3.) Swiss Info

Credit Suisse chairman Urs Rohner announces the findings of the bank’s investigation into the surveillance affair. The usually discrete world of Swiss private banking has been shaken by spying revelations at Credit Suisse, the country’s second largest wealth manager. Chairman Urs Rohner has acknowledged that the sordid affair has damaged the reputation of the bank and the Swiss financial centre. Despite Rohner’s profuse apologies, and the bank pinning the blame...

(bloomberg) Credit Suisse Group Chief Operating Officer Pierre-Olivier Boueeexternal link has resigned following a spying scandal that has rocked Switzerland’s financial circles and which the lender said caused severe reputational damage to the bank. Bouee, a long-time associate of Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam, assumed responsibility for the surveillance of former Credit Suisse executive Iqbal Khan along with the bank’s head of security. The board of...

Lucerne: The yellow building is SUVA’s head office. Between 2021 and 2027, the Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund (SUVA)external link plans to cut about 20% of its jobs in the claims management department. Currently, that department has more than 800 jobs, including agency clerks, district physicians, insurance physicians at the head office and lawyers for objections and court cases. The cuts would affect workers who handle administrative processes that can be...

Central bankers and politicians in many countries have expressed concerns about Libra’s potential impact. Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency poses no threat to central banks or to financial law and order, the head of the Geneva-based Libra Association tells swissinfo.ch. Many regulators, politicians and central banks have reacted with alarm to the proposed new digital payments system. Slated to launch next year, Libra plans to create a reserve of currencies – including...

The French complaint said that the US Department of Justice had described BNP Paribas as Sudan’s de facto central bank because it gave the Sudanese government access to international money markets, and allowed it to pay staff, the military and security forces. Victims of rights abuses in Sudan have filed a legal complaint against the French BNP Paribas bank and its Swiss subsidiary, accusing them of complicity in crimes against humanity, genocide and torture...

The centre of banking activity in Zurich Zurich is a sober and orderly city, so a fierce altercation near the Swiss National Bankexternal link between a banker to the world’s billionaires and a private detective who was trailing him is worthy of John Le Carré. It is all the more lurid that Credit Suisse ordered surveillance of Iqbal Khan after he left abruptly for its rival UBS. Credit Suisse was worried that Mr Khan, who led an expansion of wealth management there,...

Under an agreement reached in Geneva, countries with more than 75,000 tonnes in post imported annually – mainly the US – may apply self-declared new rates for distributing foreign mail from July 2020 I think it’s fair to say many people may not have heard of the Universal Postal Union (UPU). Its unassuming headquarters sits peacefully in a leafy suburb of Bern. It is the only United Nations agency to grace Switzerland’s capital with a presence. In fact, the UPU is...

The luxury goods aisle You might think twice before overcooking a load of steak, chops and sausages on the barbecue: meat costs 2.3 times more in Switzerland than the European Union average. The priciest EU country for meat, Austria, is 1.46 times the average. The Swiss also dig deeper into their pockets than other European residents for other foods, but not as noticeably as with meat, according to latest figuresexternal link from the European Statistical Office,...

Swiss bank customers do not easily change their habits. Swiss banks are turning their attention to providing more digital services for customers, but their progress has been slow. This may have something to do with new technology upstarts struggling to gain significant traction thus far in Switzerland, according to a new study. Once financial technology (fintech) innovation properly takes off in the over-crowded banking sector, the competition may well cause some...

A general view of a fire in the Amazon of Rondonia, Brazil “Playing with fire,” is the verdict of the Swiss press, in reaction to the free trade deal largely agreed between EFTA countries – among them Switzerland – and the Mercosur bloc, that includes Brazil. Questions have been raised over the timing of the agreement. It comes as Brazil led by strongman president Jair Bolsonaro, faces heavy international criticism, particularly from the European Union, of its...