Tag Archives: 3.) Swissinfo Business and Economy

Almost 8% of Swiss residents over the age of 15 rode mountain bikes. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Numbers engaging in outdoor activities like walking, cycling or mountain biking continued to rise in Switzerland in 2019, the Federal Office for Roads (ASTRA) has reported. This is also good news for the economy. Some 57% of Swiss residents labelled themselves as walkers in 2019, going on an average of 15 walks per year for an average of three hours each, ASTRA said in a...

Ralph Hamers took up the CEO post at Swiss bank UBS in 2020. Keystone / Walter Bieri “How can we [ . . .] fight increased inequality?” railed Ralph Hamers in a recent interview. To be clear, Hamers is not the boss of Unicef, or Oxfam or the Social Mobility Foundation. He is chief executive of Swiss bank UBS, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the widening wealth gap. UBS’s latest results quantified that benefit. Second-quarter net profit surged 63% to $2 billion...

The affair exploded in autumn 2019 when it emerged that Credit Suisse had private detectives tail Khan, a former head of wealth management who had left the bank for competitor UBS. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The Swiss bank and its former top manager Iqbal Khan have agreed to end all pending criminal proceedings in a 2019 spying affair that toppled the company’s top brass. Speaking to the Reuters news agency, a spokesperson for Credit Suisse confirmed a report in...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The president of the national marketing body Switzerland Tourism says the year 2021 is on course to be even worse than 2020, with 5% fewer hotel stays expected. "This is not good news, because 2020 was the worst year in history" for the sector, Martin Nydegger told the newspaper SonntagsZeitung.

Tangled in the cloud: a Federal court will now review the contract decision. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally Google has appealed a recent Swiss decision to award a cloud-computing contract to five other digital firms. The tender process has also come under criticism by defenders of data sovereignty. Google’s appeal targets the government’s decision last month to name US companies Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, and Chinese firm Alibaba, as winning candidates to create...

A Zurich apiarist checks her bees in April © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The short spring and wet summer means Swiss bees have produced ten times less honey than usual. As a result the price of honey is set to increase. After last year’s exceptional harvest, 2021 is looking very meagre: while a hive normally produces 15-20 kilos of honey, the current figure is 0-3 kilos, Swiss public radio, RTS, reportedExternal link on Thursday. “The scarcity of honey is mainly due to...

Farmers are now getting lower prices for their crop even though a living wage premium was introduced. Keystone / Legnan Koula Farmers in Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa-producing nation – are getting less for their cocoa despite the introduction of a payment that aims to secure them a living wage. The West African nation of Ivory Coast accounts for around 45% of the world’s cocoa production that brings in export revenue of $3.5 billion (CHF3.2 billion) a...

The River Aare at a weir just before flowing into Lake Biel on Friday. Lake Biel is threatening to reach a record level. Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott Lakes and rivers in central Swiss cantons such as Bern and Lucerne have reached dangerous levels, and more rain is forecast for Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday authorities in canton Bern said water levels on Lake Thun, Lake Biel and in the city of Bern would significantly exceed flood limits in the coming days....

Picasso’s ‘Fillette au béret’ before being auctioned in Sweden in 2016 TT News Agency via AFP / Pontus Lundahl Fans of Pablo Picasso will soon be able to own a share in one of his paintings for less than $6,000 (CHF5,500) – although that won’t actually buy them the right to see the work, which will be stored under lock and key in Switzerland. Fillette au béret (Young girl with a beret) is being sold – or “tokenised” – via the blockchain in what Sygnum, the digital...

Canton Bern expects water levels on Lake Thun, Lake Biel and in the city of Bern to significantly exceed flood limits in the coming days. On Lake Biel it’s possible the situation will be similar to the flood of the century in 2005. The River Simme in Wimmis, canton Bern, on Tuesday Keystone / Peter Schneider Bern’s state chancellery said on Wednesday it expected the flood level on Lake Biel to be exceeded by 25-65 centimetres. Lake Thun is expected to swell to 25-40...