Tag Archives: Latest News

Around half of retired taxpayers have gross assets of more than CHF300,000 Keystone / Stephan Scheuer Many retirees in Switzerland can continue to put money aside, with a majority also willing to bequeath the money they have saved. Specifically, 34% of the people surveyed in Switzerland aged 65 and over are building up assets instead of reducing them, according to a Swiss Life survey published on Wednesday. Some 44% said they spent about as much as they receive. The...

Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann expects 2023 and 2024 to be years of transformation for the bank as it seeks to stabilise after years of mishaps © Keystone / Michael Buholzer Credit Suisse is “definitely stable”, Chairman Axel Lehmann has told Swiss public television, SRF, adding that the embattled bank had seen a stabilisation in the outflows of client funds. The bank has reported sharp outflows as wealthy clients move assets elsewhere, while the bank...

Pure online brands are among the biggest winners this year © Keystone / Christian Beutler Online media replaced television as the most influential media genre in Switzerland for the first time in 2021, according to a study. Large brands such as 20 Minuten and Swiss public radio and television, SRF, lost influence in favour of smaller titles. In terms of importance for opinion-forming, print titles slipped to the bottom of the ranking, even behind radio and social...

Credit Suisse shares fell to a fresh record low on Thursday © Keystone / Michael Buholzer Swiss bank Credit Suisse is looking for ways to accelerate cost cuts announced just weeks ago as client outflows and a slowdown in activity weigh on its revenue outlook, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. The cost savings are likely to involve more job cuts than previously announced for the first wave of reductions, including in its mainstay wealth...

Swiss builders will receive CHF150 more a month in effective wages from next year © Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi Construction workers and trade unions in Switzerland have reached an agreement in a long-running labour dispute. Builders will receive CHF150 ($158) more a month in effective wages from next year and minimum wages will increase by CHF100 a month. The new national agreement, reached on Monday night “after intensive negotiations”, will take effect on...

The head of Credit Suisse’s Swiss division says that only a few clients are actually closing accounts at the bank. His comments after the troubled bank reported high customer fund withdrawals globally. “Some clients have withdrawn part of their funds, but only very few have actually closed their accounts,”  the CEO of Credit Suisse’s Swiss unit, André Helfenstein, said in an interview published in the SonntagsZeitung and Le Matin Dimanche. “We have only lost...

Christie’s said an unidentified Asian buyer snapped up the diamond. © Keystone / Martial Trezzini A pear-shaped 18-carat pink diamond billed as a rarity has sold at a Geneva auction for CHF28.4 million ($28.8 million), including fees and taxes. The “Fortune Pink” fancy vivid pink stone, said to be the largest of its kind and shape to go on the block, headlined Christie’s latest Geneva sale of jewellery. It had been expected to fetch between $25 million and $35...

Switzerland has made progress in reforming tax rates for multinational companies but still has work to do when it comes to turning a blind eye to tax avoidance. In an interview in the French-language paper Le Temps, Paul Tang, who led a delegation of European parliamentarians visiting Bern last week, said that Switzerland had made more progress than the European Union when it came to bringing tax rates for multinational companies in line with other countries....

The embattled Swiss bank Credit Suisse plans to shed 540 jobs in Switzerland by the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Körner told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper. In the interview he gave more details on last week’s restructuring announcement. “We will cut 2,700 jobs worldwide, including 20% in Switzerland, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2022,” Körner told the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper on October 30. On Thursday the bank unveiled major...

Swiss hotels and holiday apartments are raising their prices by around 5% this winter, largely due to higher energy prices. Ski passes are also likely to go up by a similar amount, a newspaper reports. According to a survey by the Hotelleriesuisse association, seen by NZZ am Sonntag, most Swiss hotels are planning to pass on the higher costs of electricity, gas and oil to their guests. Three-quarters of all hotels expect to raise prices this winter compared to the...