Tag Archives: Business

[caption id="attachment_439311" align="alignleft" width="400"] SNB chairman Thomas Jordan said the central bank will continue to defend the franc. (Keystone / Marcel Bieri)[/caption] The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has kept interest rates unchanged at -0.75% but is easing the burden on commercial banks. The SNB said on Thursday that it is also intervening on the foreign exchange markets to keep the franc from appreciating too far, too fast. The SNB’s...

The grounding of the fleets of many airlines is symptomatic of the crisis.  (© Keystone / Christian Beutler) The global banking industry is demanding regulators relax or delay a raft of post-crisis rules on everything from capital and liquidity to accounting and climate change, which they argue are hampering their ability to respond to the coronavirus crisis. Executives have launched the globally co-ordinated push to convince supervisors including the Bank of...

Last week, the Swiss stock exchanges experienced their worst fall since the financial crisis of 2008 (Keystone / Arne Dedert) The coronavirus has laid bare the fragilities and complex dependencies generated by globalisation. American-Swiss professor Suzanne de Treville, a specialist in helping firms relocate their industrial activities to the west, hopes that this crisis will trigger some major soul-searching. Covid-19 is on the verge of bringing the world economy to...

No need of hoarding and panic shopping, the Swiss government has reiterated. (© Keystone/Goran Basic) The Swiss authorities say there are food stocks available to consumers for more than four months to cope with the current coronavirus epidemic. “There is no reason to panic over food,” the government’s delegate for national economic supply,external link Werner Meier, said in an interview published on Wednesday in various newspapers belonging to the CH Media group....

SWISS International Air Lines has been forced to reduce flights to the US and other parts of the world. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) A United States ban on travellers from Europe has been condemned as “incomprehensible” by leading Swiss manufacturing association, Swissmem. The Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce has also weighed in, saying firms would seriously suffer if borders remain closed for longer than a month. The US is Switzerland’s second-largest trade...

The Panama Papers leaked by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed that 1,339 Swiss lawyers, financial advisers and other middlemen had set up more than 38,000 offshore entities over the last 40 years.  (Keystone / Alejandro Bolivar) The Swiss government faces resistance to efforts to tighten anti-money laundering rules that close loopholes for lawyers who act as “advisors” in setting up offshore financial structures. Anti-corruption expert Mark Pieth writes...

Employees at the greatest risk are those who don’t have the luxury to work from home. (Keystone / Matteo Bazzi) Our regular analysis of what the biggest global companies in Switzerland are up to. This week: responsible business in an epidemic, child labour on coffee farms, and Responsible Business debate. What has made multinational companies in Switzerland so successful is exactly what is making them particularly vulnerable in a global epidemic. In the Financial...

Fears over coronavirus could boost online shopping this year. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) Swiss shoppers spent more than CHF10 billion ($11 billion) online last year, an increase of 8.4% from 2018, according to a study of retail habits. Electronics and fashion goods dominated orders. Food accounted for just 2.8% of the total goods consumed (up from 1.8% in 2018), but the report’s authors expect orders to increase this year with people reluctant to go to supermarkets...

Some reports claim that planes have been flying without passengers in order to maintain landing slots. (Keystone / Laurent Gillieron) With passenger numbers down due to Covid-19, some airlines want authorities to loosen rules maintain that airport landing slots are lost unless fully used. “Use it or lose it”: regulations state that when an airline is allocated a landing slot, it must use it at least 80% of the time planned, or else risk being stripped of it the...

A pedestrian walks along an empty street in Haro, northern Spain, on March 9, 2020 (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved) Swiss pharma giant Roche said on Tuesday it would send all of its 1,200 Spanish employees home starting from Wednesday to work remotely amid the coronavirus outbreak. “The company will maintain its normal activity and will guarantee, as until now, the supply of medicines to hospitals,” Roche said in a statement. The company...