Tag Archives: Business

Pills with a bill – the CHF200 note (Keystone) Both gender and location influence the cost of end-of-life healthcare in Switzerland, finds a study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. In their analysis of 113,277 people who died between 2008 and 2010, researchers studied regional variations in cost of care during the last 12 months of life in Switzerland. Per person, the mean cost of care during that final...

The Gotthard, the world’s longest train tunnel, was opened to passenger trains last December. (Keystone) About 2.3 million rail passengers have travelled through the new transalpine tunnel in Switzerland over the past eight months, an increase of 30% compared with same period a year ago. On average, 10,400 people cross the Gotthard base tunnel in central Switzerland every day, according to the Federal Railways. Some...

Financial service firms in London are preparing for the impact of Brexit. (Keystone) At the same time as big global banks are considering alternatives to London in the wake of the Brexit vote, Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche reports, financial institutions are also recruiting new staff in the City. Rather than in commercial banking, however, these employees specialise in private wealth management. Here “the...

Last June in Munich, Greenpeace symbolically showcased a diesel engine in a coffin. (Keystone) After decades of rapid growth, the popularity of diesel vehicles in Switzerland is on the wane following scandals and concerns about environmental impact. The rise of diesel in Switzerland was big and it was fast: accounting for 17.8% of all cars on the road in 2002, last year diesel had more than doubled, to 36.8%, an...

Overnight, the Swiss National Bank disclosed the composition and breakdown of its FX reserves as of June 30. There were no notable changes, as the central bank kept most of its asset allocations unchanged from the previous quarter, with equities, government bonds and “other bonds”, at 20%, 68% and 12% respectively. There were also no shifts in the currency composition as shown in the table below. There was one notable –...

Foreign minister Didier Burkhalter speaking about Swiss-EU relations in June. (Keystone) Switzerland and the European Union today wrapped up negotiations aimed at removing technical barriers to trade for a range of industrial goods. The deal may be a sign that relations are improving between Bern and Brussels. The agreement, announced by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), involves the mutual recognition...

Overnight, the Swiss National Bank disclosed the composition and breakdown of its FX reserves as of June 30. There were no notable changes, as the central bank kept most of its asset allocations unchanged from the previous quarter, with equities, government bonds and "other bonds", at 20%, 68% and 12% respectively. There were also no shifts in the currency composition as shown in the table below. There was one notable - and unexpected - development, and it had to do with the SNB's -0.75%...

Holiday-weekend traffic has been causing long tailbacks at both ends of the Gotthard tunnel in central Switzerland. Reports of two-hour jams on Saturday may re-surface debates about traffic in the region. Southbound traffic waits to enter the Gotthard tunnel.(Keystone) As Swiss National Day approaches on 1 August, this weekend saw large movements of traffic...

More than half of the objects left on Swiss trains were reunited with their owners (Keystone) A glass eye, wedding dress and fakir costume were among the 127,000 items passengers left behind on Swiss trains last year. Wheelchairs, prostheses and dentures counted among the unusual objects on the list, which was dominated by clothes and mobile phones. Large sums of money were also found but the most valuable misplaced...

The Swiss team hopes the pod will attain speeds of 400km/h on the SpaceX track in California (swissloop) A pod built by students at Zurich’s Federal Institute of technology (ETHZ) will be competing to be the fastest to navigate the Hyperloop experimental high-speed transportation system in California. The Swiss pod, named Escher after the 19th century Swiss entrepreneur Alfred Escher, was unveiled at ETHZ at a ceremony...