Tag Archives: Business

The EU copyright reform has been surrounded by controversy, particularly over Article 13, which imposes obligations on internet service providers to obtain licences from rightholders to publish content. Tens of thousands of people across Europe, including in the Swiss city of Zurich, staged protests on Saturday against the European Union’s planned copyright reform billexternal link. More than 1,000 demonstrators marched...

Today a single hacker sitting in their apartment can bring a company or even a country to its knees. (Keystone / Sascha Steinbach) Switzerland’s federal technology institutes have launched a new Masters degree in cyber-security as part of an effort to play a leading role in studying the protection of computers and networks. The two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, Lausanne’s EPFL and Zurich’s ETH, already offer...

View of Paradeplatz in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest financial centre (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) Switzerland must make its financial centre more sustainable and transparent to ensure it doesn’t lose access to the European market, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers seen by Swiss public radio, RTS. This conclusion was part of an assessment carried out by the consulting firm and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF),...

An assortment of 2.7 million products, from computers to beer, can now by bought online with cryptocurrencies. (© Keystone / Gaetan Bally) Switzerland’s largest online shop, Digitec Galaxus, has announced it will start accepting payments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The company, which saw turnover of close to a billion francs last year, is by far the largest Swiss retailer to date to take this step. The move...

A ‘real’ cannabis plant, which remains illegal. It’s low-THC sibling is taxed. (Keystone / Alessandro Della Bella) The Federal Administrative Court has upheld a decision by Swiss customs to tax legal marijuana leaves to the same extent as tobacco. In its decision published on Wednesdayexternal link, the St Gallen court said that “fake” marijuana – i.e. cannabis containing less than 1% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – was...

The German stock exchange has been experimenting with DLT solutions for some time. (Keystone / Arne Dedert) A consortium of Swiss firms has joined forces with Germany’s main stock exchange to create a distributed ledger technology (DLT) trading system that would rival one being built by the Swiss stock exchange. The alliance is between Deutsche Börse, Switzerland’s state-owned telecoms company Swisscom, budding Swiss...

Before 1956, Swiss Railways (SBB/CFF) offered third-class rail tickets in so-called ‘wooden class’ Swiss railway companies should introduce a third-class category for passengers on a budget, a report commissioned by the Federal Office of Transport has recommended. The NZZ am Sonntag newspaper said on Sunday that a recent federal government report, commissioned by an external expert group, had recommended introducing...

There currently exists about 3,500 charging stations across Switzerland but only very few along the country’s motorway network. (© Keystone/Alexandra Wey) The Swiss government has awarded concessions to five companies to set up additional electric charging stations at 100 rest areas along the country’s motorways. The decision, announced by the Federal Roads Office on Thursday, is part of government plans to boost...

Since 2015, the Volkswagen Group has paid more than €27 billion to settle investor and consumer lawsuits as well as regulatory fines and remedies tied to resolving excessive emissions levels in its diesel cars Switzerland’s highest court has dismissed a legal complaint by a consumer group against Amag, an importer of German Volkswagen diesel cars into Switzerland, linked to the emissions-rigging scandal. The Federal...

Head of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch, speaking in Geneva on Thursday. After some years of steady but low growth, the Swiss economy expanded by 2.5% in 2018 on the back of a positive global situation. The figures, released on Thursday by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), showed growth last year that was a hair below expected (+2.6%) but...