Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

Physicists are hoping for new discoveries by ramping up the energy for the Large Hadron Collider. © Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Ten years after it discovered the Higgs boson, the world’s biggest particle accelerator is poised to smash together protons at record energy levels at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, as scientists resume their search for clues to the origins of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will get back to work on July 5,...

Welcome to the American corporate-debt market of 2022. Often the only risky bonds that are being issued are the legacy debts of a now ancient-seeming time—when interest rates were low and a recession was unthinkable. Elsewhere, the high-yield market has almost ground to a halt. A paltry $83bn of risky debt has been issued so far in 2022, 75% less than in the same period last year. A sharp rise in interest rates in the first half of this year has cooled credit...

Sommaruga (left) during the opening of a water power plant at Nant de Drance in the Swiss mountains last month. © Keystone/Laurent Gillieron Energy Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has warned of possible shortages of natural gas in Switzerland during the winter months. She said the government prepared made plans to prevent energy blackouts due to a drop in Russian gas imports in the context of war in Ukraine. But it was impossible to guarantee sufficient supplies for the...

Irina Zubchenko walks with her dog Max amid the destruction caused after shelling of a shopping center in March 2022, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Keystone How to set Ukraine on the path to recovery will be the focus of a major international conference hosted by Switzerland in Lugano in early July. But that may be easier said than done with war still raging in parts of the country and lingering concerns about corruption. “Priority number one remains ending the war, because...

Some Western countries plan to officially ban gold imports from Russia. In 2021, Russia dug up 314 tonnes of gold, nearly 10% of the metal mined globally. Ria Novosti An unexpected spike in Switzerland’s gold imports from Russia is under scrutiny as the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations gear up to introduce a ban on the precious metal. The G7’s focus on gold, Russia’s second-largest export after energy, marks the latest effort by Western nations to ramp up...

New technologies, developed to improve our society, are increasingly being used to wage war. Switzerland, which leads the development of autonomous drones, is very much affected by this phenomenon. But regulating it is very difficult and requires a joint effort by the international community – a tall order when interests collide. The war in Ukraine has emphasised that all innovations can have both civilian and military applications. It’s a two-way street that has...

The seven cartel members had fixed the prices of new Volkswagen cars for years Keystone / Filip Singer A group of Volkswagen dealers in southern Switzerland has been fined CHF44 million ($46 million) by the Federal Competition Commission (Comco). The seven cartel members, including car importer AMAG, had fixed the prices of new Volkswagen cars for years. “The car dealers colluded on all sales activities in Ticino. They made deals on public sector submissions, agreed...

Cars in Zurich. From the point of view of the environment and climate alone, transport caused an estimated CHF6 billion of damage in 2019 © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Negative costs on third parties caused by transport in Switzerland amounted to CHF14 billion ($14.7 billion) in 2019. The damage mainly affects the environment and climate, but also health. The Federal Office for Spatial Development said in a reportExternal link on Tuesday that traffic in Switzerland...

Lufthansa, the German parent company of SWISS international airlines, does not expect operations to return to normal until 2023. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Additional cancellations of SWISS flights are “unavoidable” because of staff shortages, a company spokesperson told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Sunday. Scheduled flights between August and October would be affected by the latest announcement, which was originally reported by the news portal blick.ch. It...

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com The cost of Swiss health insurance has risen sharply over the years. However, the amount that can be deducted from income to calculate federal taxes has remained comparatively low. This week, Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of closing the gap between the standardised health insurance tax deductions and what people actually pay, reported RTS. The current deductions are CHF 1,700 for an adult, CHF 3,500 for a married...