Tag Archives: 3.) Swissinfo Business and Economy

Berset insists that more people need to be vaccinated to defeat the pandemic. Keystone / Peter Schneider Health Minister Alain Berset has urged companies to back the government’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, arguing it is in the economy’s interest to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Speaking to the SonntagsBlick newspaper on Sunday, Berset said thatExternal link: “Greater commitment from business is needed.” Earlier this week, the government said that...

The number of outstanding mortgages increased by 3% on last year Keystone / Urs Flueeler A report by the leading Swiss bank UBS has found an increased risk of a real estate bubble forming in Switzerland’s housing market. The UBS Swiss real estate bubble index has risen from 1.78 to 1.90 points, in the second quarter of 2021, remaining in the ‘risk zone’, according to a report published on Tuesday. The increase is driven by a rapid rise in prices in the Swiss...

We take a deep dive into what one country – Switzerland – is doing to honour the United Nations principles on business respects human rights. This content was published on August 10, 2021 – 10:00 In this episode Imogen Foulkes is joined by Susan Misicka, host of sister podcast The Swiss Connection. How much child labour is used to produce Swiss chocolate? External Content Why is so much gold refined in Switzerland? And what happens to that gold before it ends up on...

The bank will face a trial over its role in Mozambique’s $2 billion (CHF1.8 billion) “tuna bonds” scandal, a fresh blow as it struggles to shake off a succession of crises that have plagued the group in recent years. The High Court judge presiding over a London lawsuit brought by creditors against Credit Suisse set a date last month of September 2023 for a 13-week trial, according to people familiar with the matter. The re-emergence of an eight-year-old scandal is a...

Respondents thought reducing driving was necessary – for other people Keystone / Urs Flueeler A majority (70%) of Swiss believe it’s important to avoid emissions in their everyday lives, although fewer are likely to back up their views with action, according to a survey. There were no significant differences between women and men, but the over-50 age group believed it was more important to avoid emissions than younger age groups, said a surveyExternal link by...

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...