Tag Archives: Editor’s Choice

Investec Switzerland. Swiss stocks continued to rise this week, in line with other global stocks thanks to a strong performance from financials which gained as investors weighted the prospects of higher interest rates in the US. © Steve Allen | Dreamstime.com Stocks in the financial sector advanced after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the US central bank is close to lifting interest rates as the economy continues to strengthen and signaled her intention to remain...

Le Matin. After nearly ten years of European Union opposition to preferential company tax deals, Switzerland’s government agreed in 2014 to do away with such arrangements. Under current rules Swiss cantons can offer preferential tax rates to certain companies, mostly multinationals with most of their activity abroad. In Geneva, these special rates mean certain companies pay tax at a rate of 11.7%, while all others must pay 24.2%. © Andrey Popov | Dreamstime.com The first step in the reform is...

Investec Switzerland. According to Reuters, following an investigation, China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said, it found out that Tetra Pak violated some provisions in China’s anti-trust law and will impose a fine of 668 million yuan ($97 million) on Tetra Pak for “abuse of dominant market position”. Tetra Pak crumpled The Shanghai Daily said, SAIC found that Tetra Pak had broken anti-monopoly regulations such as abusing its monopolistic status to...

Investec Switzerland. The Swiss National Bank, which has the lowest interest rate among the world’s major central banks, may be done cutting. © Valeriya Potapova | Dreamstime.com SNB President Thomas Jordan and his fellow policy makers will keep the deposit rate unchanged at minus 0.75 percent until at least the end of the first quarter of 2019, according to the median forecast in Bloomberg’s monthly survey of economists. That would mean ignoring the International Monetary...

Swisscom’s fixed line (remember those) customers will be given the option of blocking unwanted calls from 28 November. The service will be free and can be activated by checking a box online or by calling the Swisscom hotline (0800 800 800). Sunrise and UPC are expected to follow Swisscom by mid 2017, according to 24 Heures. © Marcovarro | Dreamstime.com The new system automatically filters out unwanted sales calls. There is a catch however. It will also filter out anonymous and unidentifiable...

Last Friday, the federal Swiss tax office published the latest statistics covering the wealth and earnings of the nation’s more than 5 million tax payers – Switzerland has wealth tax, so net worth is included in tax returns. The highest percentage of the very wealthiest (CHF 10 million plus) lived in Schwyz. Geneva also made the top five cantons in this category. Freienbach in Schwyz source_wikipedia_Roland zh The 2013 figures published last Friday show, from 2010 to 2013, the total net worth...

Investec Switzerland. A rally in pharmaceutical and banking shares helped boost the Swiss Market Index this week as investors weighed the prospect of a Trump’ presidency in the United States. © Chriscintron | Dreamstime.com Stocks in the healthcare sector jumped after Donald Trump’s victory as drug pricing reforms, proposed by Hillary Clinton, are now unlikely to materialize.  Pharma heavyweights Roche and Novartis helped drive the SMI to outperform global stocks by a...

Investec Switzerland. If there’s one country with reason to resent the rise of populist movements, it’s Switzerland. Twenty-two months after it abandoned its 1.20-per-euro exchange-rate cap, the Swiss National Bank still finds the franc in focus every time there’s a major event that threatens to upset markets. Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the White House pushed the currency to the strongest level since the wake of June’s Brexit vote, and options prices suggest more gains are...

Where you are born makes a big difference to the chances of getting a job when you leave school. In 2015, youth unemployment rates in some OECD countries such as Greece (49.8%), Spain (48.3%) and Italy (40.3%) were all close to 50%. In others such as Germany (7.2%), Austria (10.6%) and Switzerland (8.6%), youth unemployment was far lower. Why? The Young Workers Index 2016, an annual report by PWC, offers some insights. © Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com PWC’s analysis ranks 35 OECD...

Investec Switzerland. The Swiss government urged rejection of a popular initiative that would transform the monetary system and end fractional-reserve banking, according to its dispatch to Parliament. The measure seeks to put the central bank solely in charge of money supply and forbid commercial banks from granting loans that aren’t fully backed by deposits, effectively ending the way banking has been conducted for centuries. It’s a system known as Vollgeld — or “whole...