Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

SWISS flights to Germany are affected by the one-day strike at Lufthansa on Wednesday. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The Swiss national carrier is cancelling around a dozen flights to Germany on Wednesday, owing to a one-day strike by ground staff at its German parent company Lufthansa. Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has cancelled flights from Geneva to Frankfurt (three return flights) and Zurich to Düsseldorf (also three return flights), airline spokeswoman Karin...

© Keystone / Walter Bieri Swiss retail banks make the most profit per customer among wealthy nations, according to an international ranking. The Swiss banks are followed at a respectable distance by their Australian and Belgian competitors, according to a study by consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) published on Wednesday. According to the study, Swiss retail banks will have earned an average of CHF546 ($559) per customer by 2021, compared with CHF299 for...

Data published this week on 19 July 2022, suggest that 6th wave Covid-19 infections in Switzerland may have peaked. Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com Data published by Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health show 46,099 new cases over the 7 days to 18 July 2022. Over the prior 7 days there were 55,339 cases. Recorded cases have dropped 17% week on week. In addition, the number of weekly hospitalisations has fallen from 429 to 227 and deaths from 28 to 18. The...

The reservoir with the elegant dam near Château-d’Oex is one of more than 50 artificial lakes in the Swiss Alps. Keystone/Alessandro Della Bella Switzerland could face electricity and gas shortages in winter despite sufficient supplies at the moment and considerable reserves, experts say. “We’re witnessing the first global energy crisis, with Europe at the centre,” the head of the Federal Office of Energy, Benoît Revaz, told a news conference on Wednesday. He said...

A deal allowing Ukraine to resume its grain exports is urgently needed. The harvest season starts in July, but storage facilities are still full of last winter’s grain. Meanwhile in Somalia, which used to import all its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of famine. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved United Nations and Turkey-led negotiations with Moscow and Kyiv to allow Ukrainian grain exports to resume...

Two thirds of the illegal shipments of medical products contained potency preparations for men. Keystone/Alessandro Della Bella Switzerland’s customs and border security authorities have seized more than 230 packages of illegally imported counterfeit medical products. The confiscations were conducted during a week-long international campaign in June against the illegal online trade in fake medicines. Two-thirds of the illegal shipments contained counterfeit erectile...

The Ukraine war has heightened volatility and reduced client appetite for risk. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The ongoing war in Ukraine has been partly blamed for losses at a prominent Swiss asset management company. The entire Swiss industry suffered a dip in fortunes in the first six months of year as extreme market volatility reduced the value of investments and caused clients to play safe with their money. Independent asset manager GAM Group warns that it expects to...

Since the start of the Ukraine war, Russia has clamped down on critical media and opposition inside the country. Sputnik Russia has threatened Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung with legal action after it published critical reports and a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a letter to NZZ editor Eric Gujer published on Saturday on the Russian Embassy in Switzerland’s press service website, it said it was “outraged” by publication of an “insulting...

Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy after the US. Keystone / Andre Penner Six of the world’s biggest commodity traders have committed to help some of their largest indirect suppliers source soy sustainably in Brazil’s vulnerable Cerrado region. On June 21, Viterra (formerly Glencore Agriculture), Bunge, ADM, Cargill, LDC and COFCO – as part of a joint partnership called the Soft Commodities ForumExternal link (SCF) – announced their intention to get...

Swiss supermarkets offer a wide choice of alternatives to animal-based milk © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Plant-based dairy products continue to gain in popularity in Switzerland, with sales of plant-based milk more than doubling since 2017. However, dairy substitutes still occupy a niche in the overall market. Last year dairy substitutes generated sales of CHF172 million ($175 million) in the retail trade, the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) said on...