Tag Archives: Business

The Swiss government has started to cautiously lift several Covid restrictions put in place in mid-January to reduce infection levels. Shops, museums and sports facilities re-opened from March 1 but restaurants and bars remain closed. Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott After a weak start to the year, Switzerland’s economy should recover rapidly from a heavy coronavirus-driven slump to grow by 3% in 2021, the government said on Thursday. Gross domestic product will fall...

The government wants to retain control of weapons exports in connection with peace-keeping missions. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The Swiss government has rejected calls to allow voters and cantons to set conditions for weapons exports. A people’s initiative collected enough signatures in 2019 to force a nationwide vote on the issue. It proposes enshrining rules for war materiel exports in the constitution, which would take this responsibility away from the...

The Japanese robot “Pepper”, which Lexi is based on, is used in schools, hotels and businesses. © Keystone / Urs Flueeler Covid-19 has accelerated the transition to online teaching, raising questions about the role of robots in classrooms. Switzerland is rolling out its own robot learning programs, but it’s still a long way off before they will replace teachers. “Hi everyone, I’m Lexi”, a humanoid robot greets a full house at the University of St Gallen. Sabine...

Off-piste in Klosters, canton Graubünden. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The head of the Switzerland Tourism organisation reckons the decision to open ski resorts in the country this winter has – so far – proven to be a good one. “There were no big [virus] outbreaks, no ski resort became a hotspot, there was no major reputational damage for Switzerland – none of these fears materialised,” said Martin Nydegger in an interview with the CH-Media group on Tuesday....

An infographic shows the process of applying for an eID on the website of e-ID Switzerland, a committee in support of the eID Law opposed by a referendum. The popular vote is scheduled for March 7, 2021. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The eID is billed as a long-overdue key to the digital world, a single access point for services provided by a range of public and private-sector organisations. But the model proposed by Switzerland – being put to a nationwide...

There is a significant gap in the online trade between high and low-income countries that UNCTAD says urgently needs to be narrowed, if populations are to benefit from the digital economy. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Switzerland is the best equipped country for online shopping, according to a United Nations comparison of more than 150 states. Last year, 97% of the Swiss population used the Internet, the annual study by the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and...

The dispute centres around a Swiss attempt to uniformise functions across ATMs from different providers. © Keystone / Alexandra Wey The competition authority suspects the global credit card firm of using its position to prevent the rollout of a new, more uniform, ATM system across Switzerland. COMCO said on Tuesday it had launched an investigation on February 8 after a complaint by the Swiss financial infrastructure company SIX, which is responsible for developing...

Shoppers most often chose traditional retailers such as Migros and Coop over discounters and specialty shops for their groceries. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Consumers spent 11.3% more on food and beverages in brick-and-mortar shops last year than they did in 2019, helping the food retail trade to pull in a record turnover of nearly CHF30 billion ($33.7 billion). In total, the average household spent CHF7,680 on comestibles, according to figures released on Thursday...

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....

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,...