Tag Archives: Latest News

The former Raiffeisen CEO has been dogged by suspicions of conflict of interest during his tenure as Raiffeisen boss, during which he personally invested in subsidiaries of the banking group. Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller The Zurich public prosecutor has accused the ex-CEO of Swiss bank Raiffeisen Pierin Vincenz of fraud, embezzlement and bribery following a two-year criminal investigation. In a statement released on Tuesday, the district attorney general said that it...

The home to the European headquarters of the United Nations jumped ten spots up the ranking thanks to its fiscal attractiveness. Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi Canton Geneva has made the biggest jump in the annual Credit Suisse ranking of attractive business locations, moving up ten spots to sit just behind Zurich. According to the Credit Suisse location quality survey published on Tuesday, canton Zug, home to big multinationals like Glencore, took back its top spot...

Former CONMEBOL presidents Juan Angel Napout (left) and Nicolas Leoz in December 2014. Napout was arrested in 2015 in a pre-dawn raid at a Swiss luxury hotel as part of the US Department of Justice’s widening bribery case into FIFA. In May 2014, Leoz was indicted along with 14 other football officials by the US Department of State on charges of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. Swiss criminal proceedings against Leoz were abandoned after his death in August...

Parts of the Swiss economy that depend on global demand, such as international tourism, still face a tough time Keystone Swiss economic output will shrink by 3.8% this year, a less bad coronavirus-triggered slump than previously expected, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said on Monday. The latest SECO forecast was an improvement from its June outlook, when it said it expected Swiss gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by 6.2% this year, the worst...

Ruag has numerous production sites across Switzerland, notably a plant at Emmen near Lucerne that produces elements for space rockets. Keystone/Urs Flüeler The Swiss aerospace and armament company, Ruag, says it will shed up to 150 jobs by the end of next year due to the coronavirus crisis. A 30% drop in sales of aircraft structures over the past seven months and the restructuring of the company are the main reason for the job cuts notably in IT, finance and human...

Urban hotels have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus effect on business and international tourism. Keystone / Urs Flueeler Swiss hotels are predicting a worsening outlook, as newspapers warn thousands of jobs could be lost in the sector. According to the latest survey by sector association HotellerieSuisse  at the beginning of this month, more than a third of hotels (37%) say they will have to lay off staff in the coming months. The rate is particularly...

The University of Basel is one of the hacked institutions Keystone Unidentified cybercriminals have managed to siphon off employee salary transfers from at least three Swiss universities, including the University of Basel. “According to our information, several universities in Switzerland have been affected,” said Martina Weiss, Secretary General of the Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities, confirming to the AFP news agency a report in the SonntagsZeitung....

Sixth formers use Lego Mindstorms to make robots at a school in Glarus, Switzerland, on May 17, 2018. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The Alpine nation has slipped one place to sixth in the “World Digital Competitiveness ranking” compiled by the Lausanne-based IMD business school. The United States and Singapore came first and second in the ranking, which analyses how well economies employ digital technologies. They were followed by Denmark, Sweden and Hong Kong, IMD said...

The data comes just days after Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan signalled that even larger interventions may be on the cards in the future. Keystone / Anthony Anex The Swiss National Bank (SNB) spent CHF90 billion ($97.8 billion) in the first half of the year, more than it has spent in the past three years combined, to hold down artificially the value of the wealthy alpine state’s currency. In official data released for the first time on Wednesday, the...

Millions of litres of radioactively contaminated water are stored in water tanks at the tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima, in Japan. Keystone / Kimimasa Mayama Researchers in Zurich have developed a filter membrane made of whey proteins and activated carbon that can clean contaminated radioactive water. They hope to deploy their invention at the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Four years ago, scientists at the federal...