Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

Funding continued to flow into start-ups last year, but was spread out more thinly than 2019. © Keystone / Christian Beutler More than CHF2 billion of venture capital flowed into young Swiss companies for the second year in a row, a sustained rate of funding that defied the economic destruction wreaked by the pandemic last year. Investors poured more money into fledging cleantech and biotech projects in 2020 at the expense of ICT and particularly fintech companies....

A nurse administers the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on the opening day of the new vaccination centre at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) on January 11, 2021. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron The Swiss Covid-19 vaccination campaign is up and running with two approved vaccines available to accelerate the fight against the virus, and others set to follow. How do the vaccine technologies work and compare, and can people choose which one they get? So far, there...

M&A activity for the year as a whole was most intense in the TMT (technology, media and telecommunications) sector Keystone / Obs/caritas Schweiz / Caritas Su - Click to enlarge The coronavirus pandemic left its mark on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in Switzerland last year. The volume of transactions halved, and the number of deals was also down. Overall, the number of transactions with Swiss participation fell from 402 to 363. At $63.1 billion (CHF56...

Looking for answers at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron The World Economic Forum should put global leaders in the audience to listen to social workers, virologists and reporters, argues Simon Kuper. We don’t know yet what will happen in 2021, because the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos has been called off. Normally at this time of year, political and business leaders gather in the Swiss ski resort to reveal the future....

Boris Collardi accepts the rebuke Keystone / Steffen Schmidt Former Julius Bär CEO Boris Collardi has had his knuckles rapped by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) following an investigation into money laundering. Collardi, who is now a partner at Geneva-based bank Pictet, says he has accepted the reprimand, which is related to the FINMA investigation into alleged corruption, particularly in connection with the Venezuelan state oil company...

Our analysis of what the biggest global companies in Switzerland are up to. This week: corporate funding in politics, diamond billionaire on trial and high hopes for the economy. The siege at the US Capitol has caused Swiss companies to think twice about their associations with political parties in the US. But it isn’t the only place where Swiss companies are being dragged into politics and forced to choose between values and their bottom line. Earlier this week,...

The meltdown has crashed the currency, prompted a sovereign default and doomed at least half the population to poverty, prompting protests. Keystone / Wael Hamzeh The Swiss attorney general’s office has requested legal assistance from Lebanon in the context of a probe into “aggravated money laundering” and possible embezzlement tied to the Lebanese central bank, Reuters reports from Beirut. The probe is looking at money transfers by Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor...

Students use cell phones to carry out online learning amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, October 20, 2020. Keystone / Hotli Simanjuntak Infectious diseases, extreme weather events and cybersecurity problems pose key threats to society in the next two years, the World Economic Forum (WEF) warns. The Covid-19 pandemic looks set to have a lasting impact in the next ten years. “In 2020 we saw the effects of ignoring preparation and ignoring long-term...

Zurich/Basel, 15 January 2021 – The UBS Board of Directors announced today that Beatrice Weder di Mauro is not standing for re-election to the Board of Directors of UBS Group AG and UBS AG. She has informed the Board of her decision to step down after serving since 2012. UBS Chairman Axel A. Weber: “We will miss Beatrice’s experience and expertise in international economic and financial matters. She has consistently provided important insight to the Board and to me...

This week, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) reported 17,245 positive Covid-19 cases and 387 deaths. Over the seven days to 15 January 2021, the number daily cases reported in Switzerland averaged 2,464. This figure is significantly below the daily reported average leading up to Christmas. In the 7 days to 18 December 2020, the average daily number was around 4,300. Over the last 24 hours the results of 25,092 tests were reported, with test...