Tag Archives: Swiss Markets and News

Tickets cannot be bought on public transport in Switzerland. Passengers are required to have a ticket before boarding. Those caught on public transport without one will soon have their names put into a national register. This will ensure progressively higher fines are issued to repeat offenders. ©_SBB_CFF_FFS - Click to enlarge The new database will be rolled out from April 2019, reported RTS. By the end of 2019, the...

The bright yellow buses carry passengers throughout the Alps The Federal Office of Transport has filed a legal complaint to the Attorney General’s office and judicial authorities of Bern canton in connection with the scandal hitting the Swiss PostBus company. The complaint for possible breaches of administrative law, fraud and mismanagement is filed against unnamed persons. It is also directed against any parts of the...

Swiss government accounts closed with a surplus of CHF2.8 billion ($3 billion) for 2017, compared with a forecast deficit of CHF250 million, Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said at a press conference in Bern on Wednesday. This was due mainly to higher-than-estimated tax revenues. The surplus would have been even higher, at CHF4.8 billion, had it not been for an accounting provision of CHF2 billion. The real surplus of...

Swiss Centers China is a non-profit organisation aimed at lowering market entry barriers of Swiss companies in Asia. (GFAC) - Click to enlarge According to a survey, 72% of Swiss business leaders in China expect “higher” or “substantially higher” sales of goods from Switzerland to China and Hong Kong in 2018 than in 2017, when exports reached a record CHF16.7 billion ($17.9 billion). Just 5% of business...

Greece's government says it has evidence that senior politicians from the previous administration were involved in a bribery case in which Swiss drugmaker Novartis is accused of making illegal payments to fix prices and increase market access (Keystone) - Click to enlarge Switzerland’s Federal Office of Justice has confirmed it has received two requests for legal assistance from Greece and the United States...

A PostBus climbs the Altdorf-Isenthal road in canton Uri (Keystone) - Click to enlarge The head of Swiss Post, Susanne Ruoff, has refused to step down for errors she admits were made at the PostBus subsidiary company regarding the manipulation of accounts to claim tens of millions of francs worth of federal and cantonal subsidies. “I neither lied nor did anything wrong,” Ruoff declared in an interview on...

A pair of original Swiss-design Bally shoes from 1939 (Bally) - Click to enlarge Luxury shoemaker Bally, which was founded in Switzerland in 1851, has again changed hands. China’s Shandong Ruyi has agreed to buy a controlling stake in the firm from Luxembourg-based JAB Holding, the companies said on Friday. “This is an important milestone for Shandong Ruyi Group in our enterprise to become a global leader in...

Worldwide stock market fluctuations have been sparked by a nervous Wall Street. (Keystone) - Click to enlarge After a week marked by declines on Wall Street and stalling Asian markets, the Swiss stock market closed on Friday relatively unscathed, with the index of blue chip stocks dropping 0.93% to 8682.00 points. Over the course of the week, the Swiss Market Index (SMI) of leading Swiss stocks fell by 3.1%. It had...

The Swiss National Bank will sign the agreement with the Bank of Korea later in February (Keystone) - Click to enlarge South Korea and Switzerland are entering into a bilateral currency swap agreement, it was announced on Friday. The move is aimed at strengthening buffers against external financial shocks for both countries. “The swap agreement enables Korean won and Swiss francs to be purchased and...

The UBS Swiss Real Estate Bubble Index declined in the last quarter of 2017, the second quarterly decline in a row. Prices are considered balanced when the index reaches zero. Between zero and 1 is considered a price boom, between 1 and 2 is considered at risk and above 2 a bubble. At the end of 2017 the index sat at 1.32, still in the zone where there is a risk of a price correction. The recent fall was driven by slow...