Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

Canton Obwalden’s low tax rates attract companies and millionaires (Keystone) European Union finance ministers are set to remove Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the bloc’s lists of countries deemed to act as tax havens, an EU document said. On October 10 they are expected to remove Switzerland from the grey list that includes countries that have committed to change their tax rules to make them compliant with EU standards. Switzerland has delivered...

Joint research activities will be carried out at the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland, at the Novartis Global Service Center in Dublin, Ireland, and at Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, Britain. (© Keystone / Georgios Kefalas) Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis and computer giant Microsoft have signed a five-year partnership deal aimed at transforming the Basel-based pharma’s business – from finance to manufacturing – using artificial intelligence. The new...

While this year’s festival was seen as an artistic success, the event has left a huge hole in the organisers’ finances (© Keystone / Valentin Flauraud) The organisers of the Fête des Vignerons – a traditional winegrowers’ festival in the Swiss lakeside town of Vevey – is scrambling to cover its multi-million-franc deficit for 2019. The local winegrowers’ guild behind the once-in-a-generation private festival, which started in the 17th century, reported a CHF15...

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...