Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

Massive nickel mining projects are underway on New Caledonia. Last year, plans to sell a major nickel mine to a foreign consortium led by Trafigura faced major local opposition. © Biosphoto / Thibaut Vergoz – Droit Géré – Oeuvre Protégée Par Copyright – – – – Electric car manufacturers and other green energy companies are trying to get a grip on their mineral supply chains. In doing so, they are bringing commodity traders out from the shadows. To meet global climate...

Massive nickel mining projects are underway on New Caledonia. Last year, plans to sell a major nickel mine to a foreign consortium led by Trafigura faced major local opposition. © Biosphoto / Thibaut Vergoz – Droit Géré – Oeuvre Protégée Par Copyright – – – – Electric car manufacturers and other green energy companies are trying to get a grip on their mineral supply chains. In doing so, they are bringing commodity traders out from the shadows. To meet global climate...

Keystone / Mast Irham The global community is slipping in its efforts to tackle money laundering and terrorist finance, a Swiss corruption watchdog warned on Monday. The Basel Institute on Governance said the global risk score increased from 5.22 to 5.3 out of 10 (highest risk score) in its Anti-Money Laundering Index. In 2021, Switzerland scored 4.89 in the independent annual ranking that examines the risk of money laundering in 110 jurisdictions. That marks an...

The Swiss property market continues to heat up during the pandemic. Keystone / Christof Schuerpf The risk of a housing bubble has increased in the last three months, but the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is unconcerned about a general inflationary threat. In an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper on Sunday, SNB vice-chairman Fritz Zurbrügg said that housing market had heated further since June. “We cannot sit back and relax,” he said. “But we have also always...

The voluntary site allowed people to register their vaccinations online, but the probe found their data was not secure. Keystone / Gaetan Bally A federal investigator has found “serious” technical failures at voluntary vaccination registry mesvaccins.ch, which was closed in May following data security concerns. “The technical failures were indeed very serious, affecting all services of the platform,” Federal Data Protection Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger told Swiss...

SIX group has backed its new DLT exchange to enhance the way stocks and bonds are traded worldwide. © Keystone / Ennio Leanza A new Swiss stock exchange has been awarded a license to trade digital assets using distributed ledger technology (DLT). On Friday, the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) was given the go-ahead by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to operate as a stock exchange and central securities depositoryExternal link. The licensing...

The Orca plant in Climeworks, Iceland, intends to extract 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the air. Climeworks The Swiss company Climeworks has just opened in Iceland the world’s largest plant for the capture and permanent storage of carbon dioxide from the air. This technology is deemed essential for combating global warming, yet it raises some questions. What if, after decades of steady rise, global greenhouse gas emissions finally started to drop? Such is the...

. On 8 September 2012, the Swiss government decided to extends the use of Covid certificates. From Monday 13 September 2021, a certificate will be required to enter bars, restaurants, museums, cinemas, theatres and pools, a system already operating in numerous countries, such as Italy. The decision comes on a day when the health authorities announced the highest number of new daily cases in several months (3,550). As we head towards winter, the government is...

Trade union representatives argue employees are entitled to higher wages as the Swiss economy has picked up from the Covid crisis. Keystone/Anthony Anex The Trade Union Federation has called for a blanket salary rise for all employees as the Swiss economy recovers from the Covid-19 crisis. Switzerland’s main trade union umbrella group said employees should be entitled to a salary increase of at least 2% or CHF100 ($109) per month. Trade union president Pierre-Yves...

© Sudok1 | Dreamstime.com The latest figures on Covid-19 patients in intensive care in Swiss hospitals show a steep rise in numbers. On 18 August 2021, there were a reported 163 Covid-19 patients in intensive care wards across Switzerland. This number is far from the peaks of the first and second waves when ICU Covid-19 patient numbers exceeded 500, however the rise over the last month has been steep. On 18 July, there were fewer than 20 ICU Covid-19 patients. By 18...