Tag Archives: Business

Novartis admitted that it had signed a one-year contract with the company of Trump’s private lawyer, Michael Cohen. (Keystone) The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) announced on Wednesday that it will not bring proceedings against Novartis in connection with the payments the Swiss pharmaceutical company made to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. The OAGexternal link had received a criminal complaint...

Portmann did not spare the foreign policy committee with his criticism about the motion about improving information for Swiss expats about banking services. (Keystone) The Swiss Abroad community has suffered a new setback in its efforts to receive improved access to banking services in Switzerland. The House of Representatives on Tuesday threw out a call on the government to ease the financial woes of expatriates by...

PostFinance, the bank of the Swiss postal service, has a public service mandate to provide banking services to all residents. (Keystone) PostFinanceexternallink, one of Switzerland’s leading financial institutions, expects to cut up to 500 full-time jobs by the end of 2020. The banking division of the Post Office has launched multiple measures to counter the erosion of profit margins and the resulting decline in...

The growth in tourism from the Middle East has been driven by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates After almost tripling in the last decade, the number of tourists to Switzerland from the Middle East is slowing down, with the slowdown expected to be particularly marked this summer.   The growth rate of tourists from the Gulf will be zero this summer, according to forecasts by Oxford Economics and the Swiss tourist board....

The sanctions against Iran are affecting the banking industry there. (Keystone) A Swiss lender is suspending new transactions with Iran following US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Tehran. Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP)external link announced on Tuesday that it was wrapping up its activity in Iran in response to the US pulling out of the Iranian nuclear accord earlier this...

“Nestlé remains fully committed to its home base in Switzerland”, wrote the company in a press release. Swiss food giant Nestlé plans to cut as many as 500 computer-service jobs in Switzerland as part of a restructuring plan to increase profitability, the company announced on Tuesday. Nestlé will be outsourcing the IT jobs to Spain, according to a press release published on the company’s website. “We understand that...

This crowd backed a winner: Bernese football fans gather outside parliament on May 20 after their team, Young Boys, won the Swiss league (Keystone) Swiss crowdfunding platforms dealt with CHF375 million ($377 million) in 2017, almost three times as much as the previous year. Some 160,000 people supported a crowdfunding project. Over the past eight years, more than half a billion francs have been collected via the...

More than three times as many pubs and restaurants disappeared in Switzerland last year as the year before. The catering industry points the finger at the strong franc, responsible for more bankruptcies (+4.4%) and fewer new openings (-25%). A plastic chef attracting/scaring off customers in front of a restaurant in Lucerne Some 2,220 places to eat were removed from the trade registry and 684 went bust in 2017,...

The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne ranked 63 countries for competitiveness. (Keystone) Switzerland has dropped from second to fifth place in an annual ranking of the world’s most competitive economies, whilst the United States have moved up three places to the top. Switzerland’s fall is due mainly to “a slowdown in exports, job growth and international investment”, says the...

Switzerland is home to a thriving pharmaceutical industry. (Keystone) - Click to enlarge The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published Thursday a list of pharmaceutical companies that include Basel-based Novartis and Roche, all of which are suspected of hindering the development of generic versions of their own medicines. Over 150 complaints were filed. The FDA slammed the development of...