Tag Archives: 3.) Swiss Info

On Swiss trains passenger numbers have increased very gradually, and currently stand at around 55% of normal capacity in regional trains and 45% on intercity trains. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The collapse in the number of commuters and other passengers on Swiss trains and buses due to the pandemic is likely to leave a big hole in the finances of public transport companies. The Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung newspapers reported on Sunday that Alliance...

Congolese demonstrations protest outside Glencore’s headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, in July 2018. © Keystone / Urs Flueeler The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) has opened a criminal probe into Swiss-based commodity trader and miner Glencore over alleged corruption in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it mines copper and cobalt. Glencore said in a statement on June 19 that the Swiss criminal investigation was for the multinational’s...

SoftBank has quietly poured more than $500m into Credit Suisse investment funds. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. SoftBank has quietly poured more than $500m into Credit Suisse investment funds that in turn made big bets on the debt of struggling start-ups backed by the Japanese technology conglomerate’s Vision Fund. SoftBank made the investment into the Swiss bank’s $7.5bn range of supply-chain finance funds, said three people familiar with...

Achiko says its Cayman issues only came to light after listing in Switzerland. Keystone / Georgios Kefalas Cayman Islands fintech company Achiko has run into “compliance issues” just months after listing on the Swiss stock exchange. The firm has called a meeting of shareholders this week to approve a plan to create a Swiss company and re-list the shares from this entity. But some shareholders are upset that they will not be able to cast their votes the annual general...

Luxury brands are weathering the storm better than the rest. Keystone The coronavirus crisis could eliminate up to 100 Swiss watch brands from the market, according to an expert interviewed by the German-language weekly NZZamSonntag. Production came to a standstill during the pandemic and the most important export markets collapsed. Whether tourists with purchasing power will return to Switzerland remains in question. The watch industry, notes the newspaper, has been...

To support biodiversity, forests need dead trees as well. Though it has more than it used to, Switzerland could use more deadwood. Urs-Beat Brändli, WSL Despite threats such as drought and insects, Swiss forests are better equipped to handle natural hazards than they were a decade ago. There’s also more diversity in terms of the types of trees found in Swiss woodlands, according to the forest inventory report presented on Wednesday. Detailed monitoring since 1983 has...

Even with big sales, prices on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse are still some of the highest in the world © Keystone / Walter Bieri Three Swiss cities – Zurich, Bern and Geneva – are among the ten most expensive in the world for expatriates, according to the annual Cost of Living survey by consultants Mercer. Hong Kong remains at the top of the list of 209 countries for the third year in a row. Six of the top ten are in Asia, three in Switzerland and one in the United...

The controversial issue of e-voting is back: Swiss Post, which had halted the development of a project in July 2019, has bought a Spanish-owned system and plans to propose a platform ready for testing by 2021. Opposition to the plans of Swiss Post remains strong. The purchase was reported on May 17 by the SonntagsBlick newspaper, who wrote that the deal between Swiss Post and Spanish firm Scytl had been settled for an unspecified amount. The deal follows the...

Restrictions imposed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, such as store closures, will have a major impact on Swiss GDP in 2020, the OECD predicts. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Even though restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19 were less strict than in other countries, Switzerland will still see its GDP fall by 7.7%, if the pandemic is contained by summer. Gross domestic product will not rebound until 2021, according to the forecast published by the...

The transparent HelloMask allows non-verbal communication between patients and nursing staff Visualisation: EPFL A fully transparent surgical mask that filters out germs but allows facial expressions to be seen has been developed by Swiss scientists. Caregivers should be able to wear them from the summer of 2021. “For some segments of the population – like children, the elderly and the hearing impaired – the [current] masks are a major obstacle to communication,”...